🌿 Lovage

Levisticum officinale
A giant celery-flavored perennial that tastes like soup stock and grows like it has somewhere to be.
Sun
Full sun to part shade, 6+ hrs
Days to harvest
Perennial; harvest leaves from year one, fully from year two
Spacing
24-36 inches apart
Soil pH
6.0-7.0
Zones
Zones 4-8 as a perennial

What it looks like

Lovage (Levisticum officinale) — Levisticum officinale - Ascochyta-Blattfleckenkrankheit - Ascochyta levistici - Gerhard Bedlan
Levisticum officinale – Ascochyta-Blattfleckenkrankheit – Ascochyta levistici – Gerhard Bedlan. Photo: Bedlan Gerhard, Dr., Institut für Pflanzenschutz, BOKU, Tulln, Österreich., CC BY 4.0.
Lovage (Levisticum officinale) — Levisticum officinale - Bakterielle Blattfleckenkranheit - Pseudomonas syringae-1-Hinrichs-Berger
Levisticum officinale – Bakterielle Blattfleckenkranheit – Pseudomonas syringae-1-Hinrichs-Berger. Photo: Dr. Jan Hinrichs-Berger, Landwirtschaftliches Technologiezentrum Augustenberg, Karlsruhe., CC BY 4.0.
Lovage (Levisticum officinale) — Levisticum officinale - Bakterielle Blattfleckenkranheit - Pseudomonas syringae-2-Hinrichs Berger
Levisticum officinale – Bakterielle Blattfleckenkranheit – Pseudomonas syringae-2-Hinrichs Berger. Photo: Dr. Jan Hinrichs-Berger, Landwirtschaftliches Technologiezentrum Augustenberg, Karlsruhe., CC BY 4.0.

How to grow

Lovage is a towering carrot-family perennial — it can reach 5-6 feet — with celery-flavored leaves, stems, and seeds, and it is essentially a perennial celery that actually likes your garden. The leaves taste like intense celery with a hint of parsley and anise, and they are superb in soups, stocks, salads, and potato dishes; the hollow stems can be candied or used as stirrers, and the seeds season breads and pickles. Lovage is a long-term resident: plant it once in a spot where a 6-foot plant will not shade out its neighbors, and it will return for years, dying back in winter and surging in spring. Start from nursery plants, division, or seed sown in fall or early spring (seed needs light and cool temperatures to germinate well). It prefers rich, moist, well-drained soil and tolerates part shade, especially in hot climates — in fact, afternoon shade in zones 7 and warmer keeps leaves tender longer. In Florida and the humid South, lovage struggles with heat and humidity and is best treated as a cool-season crop or grown in the most sheltered, shaded spot available. Cut flower stalks if you want leaves rather than seed, or let some plants flower for seed and pollinators.

Water & feeding

Keep soil consistently moist — lovage is a thirsty plant and wilts in drought. About an inch to an inch and a half a week, more in hot weather. It is a heavier feeder than most herbs: mix worm castings into the planting hole and top-dress each spring. Mulch to hold moisture.

Common problems

  • Bolting and tough leaves in heat — cut flower stalks promptly and give afternoon shade in warm zones.
  • Aphids and celery leaf miners — blast aphids with water; remove mined leaves.
  • Size surprise — a mature plant is 6 feet tall and wide; site it at the back of the bed or it will swallow its neighbors.
  • Winter rot in wet soil — use well-drained soil and avoid waterlogged spots.

Harvest

Harvest young leaves as needed from spring through fall, taking outer leaves first; older leaves get tough and strongly flavored, so favor young growth for fresh use. Harvest stems before they get woody, and seeds when flower heads turn brown. Lovage leaves freeze well chopped in oil, and dried leaves keep their celery flavor better than most herbs — dry in a dark, airy spot and store airtight.

Nerdy fact: Lovage's name comes from the Latin 'levisticum,' a corruption of 'ligusticum,' meaning from Liguria in Italy — but folk etymology connected it with love, and it was once sold as a love potion ingredient. The potion part is folklore; the soup part is real, and it is the better use.

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Saving seeds

Lovage is a generous seeder, which is handy, because the plant itself is a long-term resident that you will want more of once you have tasted it.

The seed ripens in umbels in late summer. Wait until the seed turns brown, then slip a paper bag over the umbel, cut the stem, and hang it upside down to finish drying. The bag catches the seed that would otherwise shatter onto the ground, and lovage shatters enthusiastically. Thresh the dried heads by rubbing them between your hands and winnow away the chaff with a breeze or a fan on low.

Lovage seed needs light and cool temperatures to germinate well, so sow it on the surface, barely covered, in fall or very early spring. A fall sowing that overwinters in the ground is the most reliable in most of Florida, since it gives the seed the cool spell it wants without a refrigerator. Germination is uneven — some seed comes up in a couple of weeks, some takes its time — so sow generously and thin later.

Two honest limits. First, lovage seed does not keep. Viability drops fast after the first year, so use fresh seed and do not build a seed bank of it. Second, lovage self-seeds around the mother plant, which is a gift if you want volunteers and a nuisance if you do not. The volunteers are easy to move in spring, while they are small, and they transplant well.

Division is the reliable route to more plants that are exactly like the parent: lift an established clump in early spring, split it with a sharp spade, and replant. Seed is the route to new genetics and to sharing plants with friends, and it is the route that costs nothing.

Florida honesty: lovage is listed for zones 4 to 8 as a perennial, which means in most of Florida it is a cool-season perennial at best. In Central and South Florida, treat it as a fall-sown annual and enjoy it while the weather is kind; summer heat and humidity will finish it. And dry the seed fully before jarring it. Florida humidity is the enemy of stored seed, so a sealed jar with a silica gel packet, kept cool and dark, is the difference between seed that germinates and seed that quietly rots.