Tag: Shiso

These are my shiso plants still going strong two years on.

These plants have been kept in the their strawberry planter for two years now. I’m surprised tbh just how well they’ve done, as they’ve pretty much been left alone.

They were grown from seed and I put plants in various locations to figure out how they’d perform.

Even though the weather had cooled off, here are the results:

• Plants in pots outside, died
• Those in the hydroponics, also died. Too much water
• Plants in half sun, eventually also died off.
• Plants under shade – thrived.

I’m in Boorloo, Perth in Western Australia and our grow or climate zone is Zone 11a: 4.4°C to 7.2°C.

Read my other article on growing shiso from seed. But it seems clear that in our climate zone, they need permanent shade.

In Omachi in Japan, I remember walking alongside fields of shiso (green and purple) planted out in full sun. Their climate is much more suitable for an open field crop.

The plants were tall and bushy at 1.5m high. I remember making a mental note to myself at the time to one day achieve a similar kind of field in Australia.

These plants in the planter are 50cm tall and due for some fertiliser and TLC. It’s the beginning of Djilba or Spring here, cool and wet with the odd sunny weekend with some warmth. It’s gotta be one of my fave times of year.

Shiso don’t like being replanted, especially when they’re just getting established. I’ve found that young plants do not like having their roots disturbed or air dried (like most herbs I guess). It’s one of the reasons I haven’t moved these.

Also, they’ve continually produced lush leaves pretty much all year. So there’s been no reason change anything.

I’d like to see how a larger pot improves things though, so I’ll move them carefully and report back.