Herb · Lamiaceae
When to plant thyme
Evergreen, drought-tolerant and long-lived in the right soil.
Start seed indoors
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
0 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make thyme plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 0 weeks after the last frost.
Getting the timing right
Very slow from seed and best started indoors well ahead of the season, or simply bought as a plant.
Frost tolerance
Survives -18C. As with oregano, waterlogged winter soil is the real threat.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -18°C (-0.4°F)-0.4°F (-18°C).