Do you love spicy food from around the globe? If you do, you may sometimes long to be able to grow the ingredients you would find in, for example, an Indian or Thai curry. The good news is that a polytunnel can bring that much more into the realm of possibility. With a polytunnel, especially one with some winter heating, you can grow a wide range of herbs and spices and other ingredients that it would not usually be possible to grow in the UK. If you wanted, you could have a fragrant polytunnel planting scheme that concentrated only on growing the ingredients for your favourite spicy recipes.
Many people will already be growing several common curry ingredients: many gardeners, for example, will already have a bed (or some containers of some description) where they grow members of the deadly nightshade family. That may not sound particularly appetising, but we are talking about tomatoes and peppers – both bell peppers and the spicy kind. An unheated polytunnel is perfectly sufficient to grow a range of tomatoes and peppers across the whole of the UK.
If you really like to crank up the heat, you could experiment with different types of chilli pepper to see how fiery things can get. If you want to grow peppers and chilli, however, remember that you will likely need to start seeds indoors, or in a heated propagator, and you will have to start as early as January to stand the best chance of a worthwhile crop.
Obviously, onions, garlic and plenty of other vegetables will work very well in a curry, so you may find that you already grow most of the ingredients that you need to make some delicious curries. There will usually be a couple of exceptions to this, however. A general purpose polytunnel will not usually provide the flavours of traditional curries and leave a little lacking when it comes to global cuisine.
You may believe that growing things like curry leaves, cumin, or lemongrass and ginger is not likely to be possible where you live. The fact of the matter is that a polytunnel can make it possible to grow a number of exotic ingredients like these. Out crop growing guide will tell you more about the sowing and growing requirements of these additions and with some hard work, you could be picking absolutely everything you need for your curries from your own polytunnel.
