Lavender Varieties: Grosso

Hello lavender fans!

We hope you’ve had a great weekend and that your Monday has treated you OK! Today we will be looking at the variety of lavender of which we have the most: grosso…

Grosso is a variety of lavendin (follow the link to find out what that really means) and makes up the vast majority of our main field. The best way to distinguish a lavendin from an angustifolia is to first of all look its stem, a lavendin’s stem – generally speaking – looks, almost like a spear, as it is particularly long with the flower head coming to a point (as you may be able to distinguish in the photo on the left). Second of all have a little look at the greenery. A lavendin grows wider than an angustifolia, especially noticeable when they are younger flowers.

It also easy to distinguish from the period in which it blooms. Again, generally speaking, a lavendin will be in bloom later in the season. Our grosso is, pretty well, in full bloom right now and we expect it to stay that way for the next three weeks. It is difficult to give exact dates on these things, as it depends on the weather. Almost counter-intuitive to what you might expect, if there is a long period of rain, the lavender will begin to suffer and turn.

The grosso we have on the farm is about 15 years old, and is still going strong. There are a few reason for having so much of it on the farm. Though it doesn’t produce a better quality oil than the angustifolia, it has a much higher yield, meaning we get more oil out of it, and the longer stems make the plant easier to harvest come August (I will do a post on the harvesting process closer to the time.)

If you were wanting lavender at home, we tend to suggest going for an angustifolia (something like folgate or an ashdown forest) as they will stay a little more uniform and won’t take over your front garden. However, if you do have space to play with, and want a lavender that grows a little bigger, grosso is a great one to go for!

That’s it for this week. Thank you so much for reading.

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I will be back on Thursday for another of our ‘lavender digests.’

Thanks again,

Will