Grow your own spices at home, from seed to harvest: turmeric, ginger, chillies, cardamom, black pepper, and more — with container and temperate-climate tips for Western gardens.
If you are reading up on how to grow asafoetida from India at home, start with the truth: the harvest comes in year 4 at the earliest. You will not see spice in your first season, your second, or your…
Plant 5 cm kencur rhizome pieces 15 cm apart on a 25 cm raised bed in spring, keep the bed half-shaded and evenly moist through summer, then stop watering when the leaves die back in autumn. That is how to…
Sow a pinch of black seed this spring and eat garlic-flavored leaves for the next decade. That is how to grow garlic chives from seed: a perennial herb that shrugs off neglect, divides into free plants, and self-seeds with enough…
Buy a firm galangal rhizome with plump pinkish eyes from an Asian grocery, cut it into 5.1 to 7.6 cm pieces, and plant each piece 5.1 cm deep after the soil warms past 21 degrees Celsius. That is how to…
Plan on 3 to 4 years from cutting to cured pod. That is the honest answer to how to grow vanilla at home: start with a long cutting, hand-pollinate each flower on its single morning, and cure the pods yourself.…
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 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.…
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…
Scarify 20 Sichuan pepper seeds this weekend. That is how to grow Sichuan pepper from seed: a thorny, citrus-scented shrub that pays you back in tingling red husks for decades to come. The rest of this page is 15 moves,…
Soak 12 star anise seeds tonight. That is how to grow star anise in pots: a six-year wager that starts in a seed tray and ends with woody, eight-pointed pods drying on your own patio. The rest of this page…
