Start your garden from scratch! Discover expert tips on starting seeds indoors and outdoors for a thriving and productive garden.
If you searched how to grow kluwak expecting a spice harvest in a few seasons, here is the honest answer first. Kluwak comes from Pangium edule, a tropical tree that reaches 18 metres (59 feet) and bears its first fruit…
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…
Purple-stained soybean seeds are the work of a single fungus, Cercospora kikuchii, and in most harvests the purple color costs the grower more in grain dockage than in actual yield. Leaf damage from the same fungus usually trims less than…
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…
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…
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…
Two seasons stand between the seed and the flower. Sow forget-me-not seeds in late summer and they flower the following spring. The seed wakes within weeks, but the plant spends a full year as a leafy rosette before it blooms.…
This is how to grow cosmos flowers: sow after the last frost, once the soil has warmed past 18°C (65°F). Seeds emerge in 7 to 21 days, and the first flowers open 8 to 12 weeks after sowing. That timing…
Check your state’s weed list before you sow a single kochia seed in Australia. That check takes 5 minutes and decides whether you are planting an ornamental or committing an offence. Kochia (Bassia scoparia) is Prohibited Matter in New South…
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…
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…
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:…
Sow nigella after your last frost, harvest the seed in about 100 days, and never transplant it. Nigella sativa, the kalonji of Indian kitchens, is a cool-season annual with a taproot that sulks at every move, so the whole game…
Indian mustard is the rare plant that pays you twice from one sowing. Sow rai or sarson seed (Brassica juncea) in cool weather and you can cut tender sarson ka saag greens in 25 to 30 days, then let the…
Schisandra is the five-flavor berry of traditional Chinese medicine, and you can grow it from seed in a home garden if you give it two things: 60 to 90 days of cold stratification to wake the seed, and three to…
The fennel seed jar in your kitchen did not come from the bulb fennel in the vegetable aisle. That is the first thing to get straight. Indian saunf is the seed of common fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, a tall feathery plant…
Fill a 40 cm pot with forest-floor mix this autumn. That is how to grow ginseng in pots: a shade-loving woodland perennial whose taproot you will not see for five to ten years. The rest of this page is 15…
Methi is a cool-season annual that gives you two harvests from one sowing. Cut the leaves in 20 to 30 days, or let the plants run to seed in 3 to 5 months and collect methidana. The dried leaves, crumbled…
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…
