Curry Leaf

(Murraya koenigii)

Curry leaves are a staple to Indian cooking. They are super fragrant and are often fried fresh in oil with garlic and onion as the first step to a curry, or dried and ground into curry powders. Curry leaf trees grow very easily in our subtropical climate, so easily that they have been declared an environmental weed. But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow them, just keep them in check! As they have a tendancy to sucker (or produce lots of shoots from underground) they are best grown in pots. Keeping your curry leaf tree in a pot also helps you to keep it to a manageable size so you can chop the faded flower heads off to prevent the bright red berries forming. Birds LOVE these berries, and will eat them, then poop the seed out elsewhere! The seeds also drop and will give you thousands of little baby curry trees which will quickly become a weedy nightmare.

Curry leaf trees hate winter, and might lose their leaves (particularly in pots as I find they’re not quite as tough) but they will come back again when it warms up. Keep them in a warm, sunny spot and water as required (they will need less over winter). If you do notice your tree tends to lose leaves in winter, why not harvest the leaves before it gets cold and dry them, so you can have curry’s all year round!

Full sun, warm spot, prune to 1-2m, pots please!