Try growing your own plants for curry

Many of the key ingredients for the spice blend are straightforward to grow

As a gardener, I consider anything I would reach for in a food store to be fair game to try to grow at home. So when I recently reached for a jar of curry powder at the store, I figured: Why not?

As it turns out, to grow curry I would have to grow more than one plant, because curry is a mix of a number of spices. Ingredients vary according to what food it accompanies, but most contain coriander, cumin, cardamom, turmeric, fenugreek and hot pepper. Beyond these ingredients, ginger, mustard seed and cinnamon might also be used.

ALREADY IN YOUR GARDEN

Some curry ingredients are straightforward to grow.

I already grow coriander; it’s the seed that makes cilantro, which goes to seed all too quickly anyway. Sown in spring, I could have seed in hand by early summer. And if you sow coriander/cilantro once, you’ll have it always as self-sown volunteers.

I also already grow mustard, but for its leaf. Left to grow, mustard will send up stalks of yellow flowers which will be followed by seeds.

For the curry I planned to make, you can choose from among three kinds of mustard to plant. Black mustard grows tallest, about six feet high, and produces the hottest seeds. White mustard grows about two feet high (61 cm), and bears the mildest seeds. Six-inchhigh (15 cm), Chinese mustard is intermediate in hotness. Mustard seed can be planted early in spring.

I also already grow peppers. Hot peppers, like mustards, can be chosen according to the amount of hotness desired in the finished curry, from searing hot (use Thai hot peppers), to mild (use Ancho peppers). The seeds need to be sown indoors in winter or early spring and then set out in the garden once the weather has reliably warmed.

NOT SO COMMON

I have never grown cumin or fenugreek, but both are easy-to-grow annuals sown out in the garden once the soil has warmed in spring.

The final four ingredients — turmeric, ginger, cardamom and cinnamon — would be more of a challenge to pick outside most kitchen doors. The first three are in the ginger family, but that does not make growing any of them in colder regions any easier.

Turmeric is used for its yellowish colour, which could also be obtained from a plant called wild turmeric, or goldenseal, which grows wild over much of the country. The dried, ground roots are what is used.

Ginger is easy to grow in a pot, but also could be obtained from a wild plant, appropriately called wild ginger. Here again, the dried roots are the parts used.

Cardamom is a tropical, perennial herb like ginger, so could, theoretically, be grown either in a pot or outdoors in summer.

I believe I’ll omit cinnamon from my homegrown curry. This spice comes from the inner bark of a tropical tree, so would be a challenge.

EASY CURRY

Two simpler possibilities exist: the curry plant (Helichrysum italicum), a woolly, yellow-flowered Mediterranean perennial, and curry-scented geranium. Both could be overwintered in pots indoors and grown outdoors in the summer. You can’t really use either to make a curry sauce, but they could be used just for their curry aroma.