so today we're gonna see how to grow the curry leaf plant
also called as murraya koenigi
i hope i pronounced it right
curry leaf planned start producing buds and flowers somewhere in spring
and once the flowering season is done, what you're gonna see
around early summer is that these flowers start developing into
fruits so the
light pink fruits that you see are the immature fruits but what we will be harvesting today
are the black ones the black
fruits which have the fully developed seeds
and they will be used to propagate
these curry leaf plants so all we're gonna do is start
harvesting these fully developed fruits
just like that we'll probably harvest about
maybe five or six that should be good enough to look for
nice rounded you know the big ones
because the bigger the fruits are the bigger the fruits you're gonna get
so what we'll need for the potting mix is some peat moss
some garden lime because the peat moss is acidic we need some lime to
neutralize the peat moss
we're also gonna need
add worm castings which is gonna provide a good start to your
young plants worm castings and this also has some volcanic rock for some
added minerals
we're gonna need some plastic pots, some water to clean the seeds
the seeds and a paper towel
and we're gonna need
some vermiculite or perlite as well which acts as a filler
it's now time to set up a growing medium so what I'm gonna do is start mixing it
I'm going to take two parts of peat moss
and then what I'm gonna do is add two parts of the worm castings
you can use compost if you don't have worm castings
I'm also going to add a little bit of garden lime
as mentioned the lime is only used to neutralize some of the acidity
that peat moss has
and now we need to add vermiculite or perlite
which creates a nice porous medium
so now that we have everything ready we're gonna mix everything up
make sure we did not have any clumps of soil and or some
wood chips from compost if you use poot quality compost you're gonna
end up but some big sized wood chips so toss them out
make sure the planting medium is nice and even
and what we're gonna do is a set these out into our plastic pots
it's not time to peel the fruits carefully
choose the best seeds if you have a lot of seeds chose the biggest and the
fattest ones
and gently remove them from the fleshy
fruit and you have to make sure that they don't dry out so you put them in a
glass of water as you can see here
so let's look at these seeds
you don't want any fruit remaining on the seeds they should be nice and clean
and that's what's going to help the seed to germinate quickly
there we go that's a better view
so as you can see the seeds are very clean they don't have any fruits remaining
on them
and that's exactly how you want your seeds now gently push the seeds inside
the planting medium in the box
you don't wanna bury it too deep
to deep maybe a quarter of an inch would be
sufficient
so within in a few weeks should start seeing the plants emerge
it should be about that size within a few weeks
and then they'll grow rapidly so
in the later part of the video you're gonna see how to repot them in bigger
containers as well
here's another one as long as you have warm weather
curry leaves seeds to germinate and grow really quick
so like other container plants
curry leaf plants also need repotting you need to change the container
at least every year but did not wait longer than two years
so let's see how we can repot these two curry leaf plants right here
you need some nice quality potting mix
this one is a moisture control potting mix as you can see it the
soil quality deteriorates over a period of time let me just clean up the
surface of this pot
give it a nice top from the sides and then
around the curry leaf plant just like that now you want to ease up a little bit of the
roots around the plant the whole idea is to invigorate the roots
so they start growing in the new container
remember you don't want to move all the soil because you don't want to shock the
plant
just remove a little bit around the roots
and should be enough
so now we can take the container
and fill it up with the new potting mix
now I'm place in the plant inside the container
you dont want to get too much inside just make sure you have enough for room
around the roots
and then make sure your compact the soil really well this is very important
you do not want to leave any air gaps when
potting any plant this is something that people almost always overlook about
container gardening
compacting the soil around the plant
is a very important step now let's do this with the other containers well
the same steps to just tap it around remove the plant
loosen the roots
rather loosen the soil around the roots
and then fill up the container with a
good quality potting mix now potting mix and potting soil at two different
things
potting mix is actually do not contain any soil and that's a higher quality
medium that you can use to grow your plants
so potting mix is good potting soil not that good
now its time to water the plants don't forget the watering part
you gotta water them till it
drains completely and then
and then do it maybe two or three times again
so if you take good care of your curry leaf plants
fertilize them filled with a high nitrogen fertilizer
keep repotting them every year
this is what you're gonna end up with maybe after two years
as long as you take good care of them
they will grow well now this is a tip that I wanna share with you
you can see this little plastic cover
along the roots and then I have the drip irrigation system set up there
know what this does is it absorbs all the heat from the Sun and then it lets the
curry leaf plant grow better
this is a curry leaf plant growing in the ground
and it's flowering right now
these flowers will
eventually form fruits which you can use to create many more curry leaf plants
you can see the plastic cover here again now it's held in place with some garden
staples
it's a little hard to spot them because they've rusted due to the
water on them but if you watch closely you might be able to spot a couple
so what does black cover does is it absorbs all the heat from the Sun
to the ground and curry leaf plants need a lot of heat in the ground
when they're growing
this is another curry leaf plant growing in a
semi shaded area you can see I've use the same plastic
cover technique the irrigation is actually on so you can see that the drip emitted
right there and again this plastic cover a the
up the heat of the Sun thats available
those are the garden staples holding the plastic cover and place
the only insect that affects the curry leaf plant is the scale insect
which you might see as scales around the plant
to get rid of scales just use isopropyl alcohol
but you can get from any drugstore and just use a
cotton swab around the plant where scales are
and the scale insect should go away
so now that we've done all the hard work let's reap our results
and harvesting curry leaves usually start harvesting at the bottom
part as long as you have healthy leaves this plan does have some healthy leaves
at the bottom
so just pluck them out are just like that and they should snap and come out pretty easily
you don't need any tools and these are some
really good and fresh smelling curry leaves
so I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope it will let you grow some
amazingly good curry leaf plants do subscribe to our channel
and I'll see you soon again on California gardening
happy gardening