Dhaniya is the fastest herb in the Indian kitchen garden. From sowing to first leaf harvest can take as little as 10 weeks, and one planting gives you two crops: fresh dhaniya patti for garnishing and, if you let the…
Plant one chrysanthemum this spring and brew your own tea by autumn. That is how to grow chrysanthemum for tea: a perennial flower with centuries of Chinese tradition behind it. The flowers are dried whole and steeped into a pale…
You can keep Rhizoctonia out of your seedlings and transplants, but you cannot sterilize your garden against it. That is the honest starting point. The fungus behind rhizoctonia root rot survives for more than 3 years in soil as tiny…
Plant a cassia tree this year and grind your own cinnamon in three to five. That is how to grow cassia cinnamon at home: a tropical evergreen whose inner bark becomes the spice in your pantry, harvested by coppicing the…
Sow cinnamon seed within 10 days of picking the berries. That is a how to grow Indonesian cinnamon habit, and the rest of this page is 14 steps, from fresh seed to your own bark harvest. Indonesian cinnamon is the…
Sow a fresh Myristica fragrans seed within days of harvest, and hold the sand bed warm and damp for 5 weeks until it sprouts. That is how to grow nutmeg from seed: a tropical evergreen from Indonesia’s Banda Islands that…
A clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum) needs a frost-free tropical climate, fresh seed, and a 6-to-10-year wait before its first flower buds. Learning how to grow clove trees at home starts with accepting that timeline, because every shortcut in the process…
Indian cumin, called jeera in Hindi, is a warm-season annual that needs 120 frost-free days, full sun, and a dry finish to ripen its seed. Grow it in pots in cold climates, sow the seed where it will live, and…
You can grow Indian black pepper, kali mirch, in a cold climate if you treat it as a container vine that moves indoors for winter. Outdoors year-round it survives only in USDA zones 11 and 12, where frost never arrives.…
Crack 10 jujube pits this spring. That is how to grow jujube from seed: a thorned, drought-proof tree that turns out date-sweet fruit and outlives the gardener who plants it. The rest of this page is 15 moves, from stone…
Rhizoctonia root rot is treatable, but only if you catch it early and fix the conditions that invited it. The pathogen is Rhizoctonia solani, a soilborne fungus that attacks seedlings, houseplants, vegetables, and lawns at or just below the soil…
Plant a fresh Surinam cherry seed within hours of eating the fruit, keep it warm and moist, and you can have a fruiting tree in 2 to 3 years. Surinam cherry, Eugenia uniflora, is a tropical shrub or small tree…
Soak a spoonful of dried goji berries tonight. That is how to grow goji berries from seed: the dried fruit in your pantry already holds viable seed, and the shrub that grows from it fruits for decades. The rest of…
You can grow cardamom from India in a cold climate, but only as a pot plant that winters indoors. Indian green cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, grows outdoors year round in USDA zones 10b to 13a, and the plant dies back to…
Turmeric needs 7 to 10 months of warm weather to fatten its rhizomes. If you live in USDA zone 7 or below, your frost-free season is too short for that. Here is how to grow turmeric from India in a…
You can grow sarguelas from a branch cutting that is at least 4 feet long, and that single cutting can carry fruit in 2 to 3 years. The seed route takes 4 to 5 years and succeeds less often. I…
You can grow santol (Sandoricum koetjape) from seed in as little as 10 to 21 days to germination, but the honest timeline to your first fruit is 5 to 7 years, and the fruit may turn out sour. A grafted…
You can grow a tangelo from the seed of a ripe fruit, and the tree can fruit in 2 to 3 years if you buy a grafted sapling instead. A tangelo is a hybrid citrus, a tangerine crossed with a…
Yes, you can grow a quince from the seeds of a ripe fruit, and a grafted tree gives you fruit in three to five years. The seeds need a full three months of cold stratification before they germinate. Quince, the…
Yes, ugli fruit is real. It is a natural Jamaican tangelo, a tangerine crossed with a grapefruit, discovered growing wild near Brown’s Town, Jamaica, around 1917. The fastest route to fruit is a grafted tree, which can harvest in 2…
