Nothing beats authentic, fresh ingredients when making a curry; so why not grow your own? It’s easier than you might think to grow some of the ingredients used in most curries in the UK. It’s also extremely enjoyable and rewarding to start completely from scratch.

Winter is approaching more quickly than many of us bargained for after what was a half decent summer, but for some key ingredients there’s still plenty of time to start sowing your seeds and planting your bulbs in preparation for an excellent curry harvest!

Onions

If you start planting onion bulbs in the next month or so you can expect to be lifting them around May of next year. White onions tend to be best for curries.

Garlic

This is the best time of year to plant garlic as a cold snap shortly after planting will help to stimulate growth with means big flavoursome bulbs!

Chillies

Oddly enough it’ll soon be time to get ahead with your chillies, however the cold weather means growing them
indoors during the harsher winter months in order to prepare to harvest in the early summer. Ideally you’ll want to put the plants in a warm sunny spot in the house (conservatories are ideal if you have them) then start moving them outside in the warmer, later months of spring.

Ginger

There’s nothing quite as delicious and flavour enhancing as fresh ginger, and it’s easier to grow than you might expect. You’ll need to find a ginger root with small yellow spots growing out it – you should be able to find one in your local grocers or supermarket. Plant the root in a pot by a window or in a conservatory and try and keep it at a fairly constant temperature, watering quite regularly to keep the soil moist.

It’s a little more time consuming and a little less convenient than buying the ingredients in the shops, but you can look forward to the best tasting curries outside of an Indian restaurant. This list covers just some of the most basic ingredients, with a wide variety of spices and vegetables to put into curry why not explore what can be grown throughout the year? It’s a cheaper and more sustainable way of preparing the curry you love and there’s nothing more satisfying than growing your own.