A Melbourne Grown Curry – Can it be done?

I have a mission!  – To successfully grow all the ingredients for an Indian vegetable curry.

For this I figure at a minimum I need to grow:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• Coriander (seed and leaf)
• Cumin
• Chilli
• Tomatoes
• Plus a vegetable to curry eg potatoes.

As I’ve sown more potatoes than you can poke a stick at, and plan on sowing more in a month or so, this part of the curry should not be a problem.  Even if all my potatoes fail I will just substitute eggplant or beans or anything that I do have when the other ingredients are ready.

Of the other ingredients Tomatoes, Garlic, Chilli and Coriander don’t present too many problems (although as I’ve mentioned before, Melbourne and Coriander usually don’t seem to like each other that much – however I have heaps in the garden at the moment so I am feeling confident!).  I have posted before on my attempts to grow Ginger and feel fairly optimistic that I can again achieve a large enough crop for a curry.  I have also attempted turmeric previously and whilst I didn’t really get much more than I planted I still think it would be sufficient for a meal.  This leaves cumin and most ridiculously onions.

Onions should and do grow well in Melbourne but I sowed mine late, and this is what they currently look like:

Which would be fine (if annoyingly slow) except they are growing right where I want to plant out these:

So the onions are going to have to be eaten as spring onions and the curry experiment may need to go on hold….or not…….as I do have these, planted in convenient location:

Shallots it is then to replace onions, which leaves cumin.

Cumin I really need to do some research on.  My first attempt to grow it entailed sowing some seed my mother had in her pantry (I usually sow seeds at my parents house – they entertain the kids whilst I play in their potting shed).  Interestingly what germinated, and I originally thought was cumin, actually turned out to be grass seed (well I’m pretty sure I grew grass not cumin…).  So either some got into the seed tray (and none of the others I sowed that day) or the cumin I bought had been adulterated with grass seed.  Which has actually got me thinking about how many other spices have been adulterated – perhaps I will sow some and see what pops up.

All this aside and I am no closer to growing any cumin.  So is there anyone out there who has successfully grown cumin, ideally in a temperate climate but frankly any info would be great at this point?  If not lets hope my spice supplier is more trustworthy than my mothers…..