Recently Isaac has been researching tea blends, and one particular blend we wanted to try contained fenugreek leaves. With only a pinch left in my spice collection, we drank through those really quickly. So it was time to start growing it ourselves. And here’s how we ended up with thrifty homegrown fenugreek:

After thinking over some options of how to gather the requirements for growing fenugreek leaves, I finally remembered the genius of Millie from Gardening Australia – Kitchen Cultivation. Here she grows plants from seeds she already has in the pantry. We already have organic fenugreek seeds in bulk in the pantry – so plenty to share with the garden! And no need to buy anything new here.

A sprinkle in the garden, some light watering and a little patience later… We had ourselves the beginnings of some thrifty homegrown fenugreek! Our fenugreek plants are still young, but growing fast enough that I’ve been picking some leaves already and using them in my tea.

If you’re new to gardening:

A helpful thing to know is that most seeds like to be planted at a depth of about 2.5 times the length of the seed.

Before planting new seeds, I like to scatter some of the compost over the area where I’ll be planting. I then loosely mix it in to the existing top soil. As well as adding some nutrients to the soil, it seems to help with water retention too.

Since Fenugreek seeds are quite small, I scattered them over the soil and then loosely ‘roughed’ them in with my hands. That is, I used my fingers like a gentle garden fork to rake over the seeds. This is so they find places where they are just covered by the soil, or in little soil crevices.

Then I watered them in. This also does the rest of the work to help them settle into a good place.

I watered them regularly (as required) to keep the soil moist until the seeds had germinated and the little baby plants (seedlings) looked strong enough to ease off on the care.