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Growing ghost peppers takes 120 to 160 days from seed to ripe pods. Difficulty is moderate to hard: the plant itself is easy, the germination and the season length are not. Start seeds indoors 8 to 10 weeks before your…
Long pepper is the tropical vine Piper longum, known in Ayurveda as pippali and in Chinese markets as bìbá, and its spice is a dense catkin-like spike 1.25 to 2 cm long, harvested blackish green and sun-dried for four to…
Plant one plump supermarket ginger root in February and you can dig up fresh, juicy rhizomes by October, with thin skins you never need to peel. Learning how to grow ginger at home comes down to three things: warmth, a…
Start a stem cutting of grass jelly plant (Cyclea barbata, cincau hijau) in a large pot with a tall trellis. That is how to grow grass jelly plant outside the tropics: a herbaceous vine that climbs about 5 m in…
Take a 15 to 20 cm semi-hardwood stem cutting, strip the lower leaves, and push it into moist potting mix. That is how to grow katuk sweet leaf in a temperate garden: fast shoots, a deep pot, bright shade, and…
Sow stonebreaker seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before your last frost, at 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, and seedlings emerge within 1 to 2 weeks in a warm, bright spot. That is how to grow stonebreaker from Indonesia in…
Planting takes one autumn afternoon. At 10 cm spacing, 60 corms need about 6 square feet of bed. Harvest comes the next October. Difficulty is moderate: the planting is easy, the patience and the drainage discipline are not. Kashmir saffron…
Start tulsi indoors 6 to 12 weeks before your last frost, move it out only when nights stay above 50°F, and you can cut your first handful of leaves at the four-month mark after sowing. In USDA zones 10 and…
Give one Lonicera japonica vine a 2-meter trellis in full sun and prune it hard twice a year. That is how to grow honeysuckle for tea without the plant eating your fence line. The rest of this page is 12…
4 to 5 years. That is how to grow white peony root from a bare-root division to a bai shao harvest: plant in autumn, give the plant four full seasons to build thick roots, then dig, peel, boil, and sun-dry…
To grow Arabian jasmine, give the plant full sun, a loose well-drained mix, and a pot you can carry indoors, because this tropical shrub only survives outdoors year-round in USDA zones 9 through 11. A healthy plant reaches 6 to…
Start with a 20-gallon (76-liter) pot, full sun, and a plan to bring the tree indoors before hard frost. That is how to grow bilimbi outside the tropics: the tree stays small enough to wheel inside, and seeds grow into…
Start roselle seeds indoors 6 weeks before your last frost. Learning how to grow roselle in a temperate climate comes down to three moves after that: full sun, a large container, and picking the fleshy red calyces 100 to 110…
Black cardamom does not want what green cardamom wants. It grows on cool, wet, shaded slopes in the eastern Himalayas, and it will tell you quickly when your garden cannot copy that. Before you buy a single seed, know the…
Tejpat is a tree. Say it plainly, because most first-time growers picture an herb. Indian bay leaf (Cinnamomum tamala) is an evergreen tree from the Himalayan foothills that reaches 12 meters or more in the wild, and even a pampered…
If you want to learn how to grow Rehmannia glutinosa, start with the seed packet, not the soil. The plant sold as “Chinese foxglove” seed is usually a different species entirely, while the true Di Huang of traditional Chinese herb…
You can grow perilla from seed in a single season and start picking leaves about five to six weeks after sowing. Perilla (Perilla frutescens) is a warm-season annual in the mint family, and the whole project, from seed packet to…
Gotu kola (pegagan) grows in 90 days from a rooted runner and belongs in a pot, not the open garden. This creeping tropical perennial sends out stolons that root at every node, so a wide shallow container holds it in…
Press lemon basil seed into damp mix 4 to 6 weeks before your last frost, and the first sprouts break the surface in 10 to 14 days at 70 to 85°F. That is how to grow lemon basil from seed:…
Growing Indonesian bay leaf starts with one non-negotiable fact: the seed must come from fresh, ripe fruit and go into soil within 4 to 6 weeks of harvest, because after that window it hardly germinates at all. Sow it on…
