Growing Lavender in the Philippines Update 1

As promised here's our update regarding our Lavender Officinalis plant. 2 months after we've posted that we're trying to grow lavender, a lot of its leaves started to dry out. Here's a look of how she's doing:

A month ago, we noticed an increase of leaves turning brown, and this was around the time that Metro Manila was getting more rainfall so we carefully re-potted the plant to a clay pot. It helped a bit, but typhoon Lando came and the noticeable impact of too much water showed. More than 50% of the leaves suddenly began to grow limp and a few days later, they just went brown. We've also tried spraying the plant with foliar, in case the roots are not functioning anymore and it seemed to have helped. A major concern right now is that there has been sporadic rains which may aggravate the case further inspite of a potting medium with very good drainage.

To sum up, here's a few things we've surmised while we're taking care of the plant:

1. Lavender is such a sensitive plant. Slight changes affect it a lot.
2. Protect the roots from too much water. Rain doesn't seem to do the plant much good, especially if it soaks up the area where its roots are. Controlling the water is essential to the plant's survival. Watering every 2 days may work, and using less water is best practice in this case.
3. Avoid moving the plant constantly. It seemed to hate being moved from one place to another because we're hiding it from the rain. Perhaps a cover during rains may work instead.
4. Lavender likes the sun. It can survive with partial sun, but if there's a place where it can get full sun, the better. If the plant is just getting partial sun, take it easy on watering a bit further.
5. Foliar spray may have help the plant if you want to give it a boost of nutrients.

Hopefully, our plant survives this bout and no one accidentally waters it out of schedule. Nevertheless, whatever the outcome of our plant will be, we're already working on preparing for our next batch of lavender plants. We've recently bought lavender seeds and made plans for a mini greenhouse so we can apply what we've learned better.

Growing Lavender in the Philippines

We've heard from a lot of people about growing Lavender in the Philippines. They tell us a lot of stories about how they themselves or their friends tried making the plant survive here in the country, and ultimately giving up on it. Why try? Because Lavender is such an amazing plant. Aside from the fact that it is one of the most well-known and widely used flower in the world (it surpassed roses a long time ago because of price and availability), real Lavender is but a delight to the senses. And because we dream of being able to grow our own Lavender, we are also trying.

Any species of Lavender doesn't thrive naturally in the tropics, but they can, as proven by a handful few. Cultivating them here in the country, will definitely be an uphill climb because the odds are bigger than the chances. The plant doesn't like being soaked frequently, loves a cool climate, thrives well under a good amount of sun and a dozen other factors that nags everyone to drop the idea and find other things to grow. But we'd like to try swimming against the current.

To build our confidence, we bought ourselves a 4 or 6 month old seedling of English Lavender (Lavandula Officinalis) to check our green thumbs. That was 2 months ago. Here she is now:

People seem to have understood the needs of Lavender because where we bought the seedling, they potted the plant on a high drainage potting medium which the plant seemed to be enjoying. Seeing it grow and mature in the past 60 days has been kind of a roller coaster ride. There are times when the leaves would be uptight and proud, such a happy sight. There are times when its leaves will droop low, and we'd get concerned. But now, she's going good. Her major stem is turning woody, the leaves are proliferating and the shoots are continually appearing. Whenever we pluck the damaged or drying out leaves, crushing it on our fingers releases a delightful fragrance, assuring us its going to be alright.

So we decided to take it to the next level: growing Lavender from seeds. We tried the English Lavender Munstead variant, and out of the about 200 seeds we planted, about 15 sprouted. However, because of the unpredictable weather in the past weeks and a lot of other factors, it went down to 3 yesterday and as of checking a while ago, one more wilted out. So here's one of the survivors:

All of these are just very small trials, as we are dreaming of growing a lot of Lavender locally and getting extracts or essential oils. By the looks of it, seems like we have a long, long way to go in improving the survival success of the plant. If it won't thrive well in a more or less controlled environment, how will it fare on a more hostile environment out in a field? Indeed, it takes a lot of patience, but once flowers will bloom, it will definitely be a statement it was worth all the effort.