Ditch shop-bought curry leaves: fresh ones will knock your socks off

My curry tree plant has finally decided it likes me. For several years, it sulked, refusing to put on growth and at its darkest moments dropping all its leaves if I dared look at it for too long. But this summer, it chose life and flourished, sending out so many zingy, vibrant green leaves that I might finally think of cooking liberally with it.

Like so many things homegrown, the fresh leaves knock the socks off the dull, papery leaves in shops. To merely brush by a living plant is to fill the room with its extraordinary scent. It would make an excellent present for the cook in your life. Though I warn you, now waiting lists are standard for this one, though it’s worth looking on Etsy for young plants.

The curry tree or curry leaf tree, Murraya koenigii, is a subtropical tree in the Rutaceae family, distant kin of the lemon and orange, and is native to Asia. The leaves are an indispensable part of south Asian cuisines and medicines. They are the start of many dishes, fried in oil to release their pungent aromas.

In the heat of its home, it will grow to a tree about six metres tall. Not so here, where at best you may get it to about a metre. It has to live indoors and will need a bright, sunny position. In summer, kick it out for a little rewilding, some rain and some sun, but at the first hint of cold nights bring it back in, as it is not frost hardy. Below 4C it will drop its leaves, but indoors it will remain evergreen all year.

It thrives on rich, free-draining conditions, but it will mope if it lives in a pot too big for its roots. That is, for sure, why my plant was in a funk: I overpotted it from its 9cm pot into one double the size and its roots hated it. For plants that are slow-growing or prefer to be slightly root bound, a huge pot of soil is a slump of cold earth to avoid. And because the new compost doesn’t have roots growing into it, it further compacts and if overwatered becomes like a cold bog around the little plant.

Rectify this by potting down; pot on only when you see white roots poke out from the drainage holes. Other than not ovepotting, all you need to do is water regularly in summer and more sparingly in winter. It’s worth feeding during the summer, too.

If your curry tree does exceptionally well and you find yourself with more growth than you have space for, they respond well to cutting back hard. The leaves can be dried or frozen. Home-dried leaves are much more pungent than shop-bought ones.