Satureja hortensis - Annual Savory

Annual Savory is an essential aromatic herb for the vegetable garden, with a peppery taste reminiscent of marjoram, ideal for enhancing pulses and grilled meats. In Latin Satureja hortensis, commonly called common savory or garden savory, it grows quickly and takes up little space: it's an excellent small aromatic for borders, herb gardens, urban vegetable plots and containers. In midsummer, its flowering attracts bees and other pollinators, while emitting a scent that bothers aphids and mosquitoes.

Annual savory belongs to the Lamiaceae family, like thyme and oregano. It is a strictly annual plant: it germinates in spring, grows very quickly, flowers and then goes to seed in late summer. The species is native to southeastern Europe and western Asia.
This plant forms a small, highly ramified clump, with an upright then slightly spreading habit, with square stems, green to reddish, covered in opposite, single, linear to lanceolate leaves, 1 to 4 cm long and a few millimetres wide.
The foliage, of a bright green, is very rich in essential oil glands and releases a spicy, warm and peppery fragrance when crushed. The flowers appear from July to September. They are small, tubular, with two lips, white to pinkish-white, sometimes tinged with mauve, and are frequently visited by bees and other pollinating insects. After flowering, the plant produces tiny, fine, brownish seeds that can self-seed.

Compared to Winter Savory (Satureja montana), a perennial and hardier plant, annual savory offers a less powerful but more delicate aroma. Its very rapid growth is well-suited to regions with cold winters, as it is sown there each year.
Since antiquity, it has been renowned for its culinary and medicinal uses, cited by Dioscorides and recommended in monastic gardens and later in the Capitulare de villis: it is a very ancient plant in our vegetable gardens.

In cooking, annual savory is the great companion of pulses: it is added to the cooking water of beans, lentils, chickpeas or broad beans to flavour them while making them more digestible. Its peppery aroma wonderfully enhances grilled pork, lamb or poultry, as well as stews, stuffings, marinades and slow-cooked dishes. It is used fresh, finely chopped, on summer vegetables (courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes), in omelettes, savoury cakes or vegetable tarts, and dried in bouquets garnis in place of or alongside thyme. Its leaves also flavour homemade oils and vinegars, to be used later as a drizzle on tomato, potato or green bean salads.

Harvest: the leaves are harvested from June to October by simply cutting the shoots. It is preferable to do this before flowering to preserve the full intensity of its fragrance.

Storage: Savory keeps very well once dried.

The gardener's tip: in the garden, don't hesitate to mix things up by installing a few aromatic plants like Savory right in the middle of your perennial borders or even in rockeries. It's very pretty and the fragrances, sometimes powerful, of aromatic plants often have the ability to repel insects that might attack more sensitive plants like certain roses.