Growing Lemon Grass
Aan essential ingredient in Thai cuisine (curry etc) and of course lemon grass tea. The question is can you grow your own Lemon Grass in the UK. The tender white stalks are used for cooking, (you can freeze these) the rest can be used for lemon grass tea. Great with fish and chicken dishes.
Propagating Lemon Grass
You can buy lemon grass plants from herb nurseries, and you can also try to strike it yourself from 'some' types that you buy from markets.
Look for a bunch that has a good 'bulb' at the bottom and maybe a few roots as well, suspend the bulb so the very bottom is touching the water and then wait until it sends out new roots.
Change the water every 2nd day.
Once the roots start to form and reach 2 -3 inches you can plant it in a pot or container, be careful at this stage as the roots will be fairly fragile.
Or you can just buy some young plants from a herb specialist (thats what we do). As for growing from seed, probably not worth the effort unless you want a lot of lemon grass.
Growing Lemon grass
Another herb that grows well in a humus rich moist soil in full sun. However you can grow it indoors on a sunny windowsill.
We strongly suggest that you keep it in a pot or container as it can tend to run a little and 'take over'.
So you have it growing (in a pot) and you want to know how to keep it happy, moisture is the key, but not waterlogged, light and sun is essential, and a warm spot away from frosts and the cold.
If you grow it it pots, you can over winter it on a protected patio or indoors.
As for fertiliser, an all round slow release fertiliser will do the job, but as always we use a seaweed fertiliser especially when young, it just seems to get lemon grass growing well.
Lemon Grass is available for sale online from specialist herb nurseries listed.
NORFOLK HERBS
Tel: +44 (0)1362 860812 Fax: +44 (0)1362 860812
Norfolk Herbs are growers of naturally raised culinary, medicinal and aromatic herb plants for wholesale, retail and mail order supply together with Bay Trees, Scented Pelargoniums and Hand Thrown English Garden Terracotta to give stature, colour, scent and flavour to a window-sill, patio,
garden or landscape