This page has the spacing for thyme in the table above, and that one figure is most of what the data can honestly give: thyme is a woody perennial picked a little at a time over years, so it has no days-to-maturity from sowing and no yield per plant, and the quick facts rows say so rather than inventing either.
What decides how thyme goes for you is two things the numbers do not carry — what you plant it beside, and how much sun it gets. Those are also, by some distance, what people ask about it.
Thyme companion plants
Thyme is one of the most commonly recommended companion plants in a vegetable garden, and it is worth separating the reason that holds up from the reasons that are simply repeated.
The mechanism that holds up is the flowers. Thyme flowers early and heavily, and the individual flowers are small, shallow and open — the shape that small beneficial insects can actually feed from. Hoverflies, parasitic wasps and lacewings work it, and their larvae eat aphids and caterpillars. This is the same mechanism that makes dill useful, and attracting beneficial insects is the best-supported of the companion planting claims.
Two consequences follow, both usually missed:
- The benefit comes from thyme in flower. A plant clipped hard for the kitchen all season feeds nobody. Let some of it bloom.
- It works garden-wide, not plant-by-plant. The insects are not confined to the neighbouring row, so thyme at an edge or a corner does the job. It does not need interplanting.
The traditional pairings are cabbage and the other brassicas, where the claim is that thyme's scent confuses cabbage moth; and strawberries, where thyme is used as a low edging. Tomatoes and eggplants are named often too. The scent-masking claim is plausible and thinly evidenced — does companion planting actually work goes through which of these stand up. There is no cost to trying it.
The test that is actually useful is not a pairing list at all: does the neighbour want the same conditions? Thyme needs full sun, sharp drainage and poor soil. Plant it beside something that needs steady moisture and regular feeding and one of the two will suffer, whichever regime you follow — and it will usually be the thyme, because wet ground kills it.
So its real companions are the other woody Mediterranean herbs: rosemary, sage, oregano and lavender. All four want the same treatment, and a bed of them can be watered, fed and pruned as one thing.
The soft herbs are the opposite case. Basil, cilantro, dill and parsley all want moisture and some feeding, so they belong in different ground.
Where to put it in practice. An edge, a corner, a gap in a path, the front of a raised bed, or a pot. Anywhere it will not be caught by the watering a vegetable bed gets. Thyme is low and spreading enough to work as an edging plant, which is how it ends up next to strawberries in so much advice, and it takes light foot traffic better than any other herb here.
The note under the companion table on this page is worth reading: these pairings are traditional garden practice rather than settled science, and getting the drainage right will do far more for a thyme than its neighbours ever will.
Does thyme grow in shade?
This gets asked three or four different ways, so here is the direct answer: thyme grows in shade and is not worth picking when it does.
Thyme is a Mediterranean plant from open, stony, sun-baked ground. What happens in shade is predictable:
- It grows leggy. Longer, thinner stems reaching for light, with more space between the leaves, instead of a dense low mound.
- It tastes of less. The aromatic oils that carry thyme's flavour build up in strong sunlight. A shade-grown plant is measurably milder, and this is the part that matters if you grow it to cook with.
- It is far more likely to rot. In shade neither the foliage nor the soil surface dries out, and a plant that never dries never hardens off. Most thyme lost over winter is lost to wet rather than cold.
So: six or more hours of direct sun, in the most open position you have, with air moving through it. The note under the quick facts table explains where that six-hour figure comes from.
If the only ground you have is shaded for half the day, grow thyme in a pot you can move into the light rather than planting it out and hoping. That is a better answer than choosing a "shade-tolerant" variety, because tolerance here means surviving, not thriving.
Planting and spacing
Thyme is planted from a container-grown plant, a cutting or a divided clump rather than sown. The seed is tiny and slow and the seedlings are too small to compete in open ground, which is why the quick facts table shows no sowing dates, with the reason in each row.
UGA gives thyme as a fall or spring planting rather than a number of weeks relative to frost, so that is what the table quotes.
Spacing is 12 inches, from UGA's herb table, and the plant spacing calculator turns it into plant counts for a bed. There is no row figure for thyme: UGA's table gives none for any herb and Minnesota's herb page gives no per-herb figures at all, so that row reports a confirmed absence rather than a guess.
Plant it with the top of the rootball level with the soil surface or slightly proud of it, never in a dip, and backfill with the soil you dug out rather than compost.
Soil, water and feeding
Poor, gritty, sharply drained soil, and genuinely poor is better. Thyme is more strongly flavoured on thin ground than on anything improved, and rich soil gives soft growth that rots.
On heavy ground, raise it: a mound, a raised bed, a gap between paving stones, or a pot. What to fill raised garden beds with covers the mix — push it towards the coarse end for thyme.
Water it in when new, then almost never. Thyme is among the most drought-tolerant plants you can grow, and standing wet is what kills it. No publication behind this page gives a weekly figure, so the quick facts table says so instead of printing one.
Do not feed it. There is nothing to gain and flavour to lose.
Do not mulch it with anything that holds water against the stems over winter. This is a specific and common way to lose an established plant: a generous organic mulch applied in autumn keeps the crown damp through exactly the months it needs to be dry. Gravel or grit is fine.
No publication behind this page gives a pH range for thyme itself. UGA puts most herbs at about 6 to 7.5 and Minnesota at 6.0 to 7.5, and the quick facts table reports it that way.
Picking, pruning and old plants
Picking is pruning, so the two are the same job. Cut sprigs from the tips with snips rather than tugging, take no more than about a third at a time, and stay in growth that still carries leaves. Regular picking keeps a plant dense and low; leaving it alone lets it sprawl.
Flavour is strongest just before the flowers open. Thyme is evergreen enough to pick through mild winters, though growth effectively stops and a plant should not be stripped then.
Trim lightly every year, after flowering, and never into the bare brown wood. Thyme shares the habit of lavender, rosemary and sage: it does not reshoot from old wood, so a hard cut into a woody stem kills that stem rather than reviving it.
An old clump goes woody and open in the middle and spreads outwards from the edges. That is the plant's habit rather than a failure, and the fix is replacement rather than surgery. Both easy routes work: peg a low stem down into the soil and it roots where it touches, or take a few cuttings from soft summer growth. Divide the rooted parts off and start again.
Common problems
Leggy, sparse, weak-tasting growth. Not enough sun. Covered above, and it is the commonest problem with thyme by a distance.
The plant died over winter. Wet rather than cold, most likely — check the drainage and whether anything was holding moisture against the crown.
Woody and open in the centre. Age. Trim annually to slow it, then replace from cuttings.
It dwindled in a pot. Either a mix that holds too much water, blocked drainage holes, or a saucer left standing full.
Something is eating it. Rarely a problem — thyme is one of the least troubled plants in a herb bed. Slugs occasionally go for very soft new growth in a damp spring.
Our other herb guides are basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender, dill, parsley and cilantro. The full set is on the crop guides index.