Saturday 25 June 2016

Growing Lemongrass

We eat lots of Oriental food in our house - Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, you name it, we love it! One of our favourite flavouring herbs is Lemongrass. The name says it all: it's a grass that tastes of Lemon. It is used a lot in Malay and Indonesian cuisine, and is a prominent ingredient of the dish Beef Rendang.


Mature Lemongrass. Photo by Jo Jo Yee (with permission)


Jo Jo Yee, who took the photos above, was a contestant in the TV programme "The Great Allotment Challenge" a couple of years ago. She writes the blog Fusian Living, in which she uses her Chinese heritage to write authoritatively about Asian cuisine and how it can be adapted to Western tastes. Even if you're not planning to grow Lemongrass, Jo Jo's blog is worth a browse for all the recipes! By the way, although of Chinese ancestry, Jo Jo was (like me) born in Malaysia, though until a few years ago she used to live in Australia, where I imagine growing Lemongrass is a whole lot easier than it is in the UK!

These days it's not too hard to find Lemongrass in the shops in the UK. It's usually on the shelf where you find garlic and ginger (and hopefully fresh chillis).


However, it can be expensive (at Sainsbury's it is currently 80p for 2 sticks) and it is often not very fresh when you buy it, so I thought it would be a good idea to grow some in my garden. One way of doing this is to buy some stalks of it and root them in water prior to planting-out in a pot of soil, but I decided to grow it from seed. I purchased my seeds from Simply Seeds. Theirs is an Indian variety that grows to only about 30cm tall. Interestingly it is also described as frost hardy, though I doubt that.

In the pack were approximately 500 seeds. I wasn't sure whether one plant would produce one stalk or many, so I sowed about 30 seeds. I have subsequently learned that a Lemongrass plant will produce multiple stalks, so 30 plants might perhaps be a bit OTT!

The instructions on the pack said to sow Lemongrass in April, May or June. I sowed mine indoors in a small pot of moist compost on 28th April. I think they must have all germinated. A month later they had shot up:


Now obviously 30 plants are not going to be happy in a little pot like that for very long, so just recently I moved them on a stage. I separated the clump of little seedlings into four, trying hard to minimise root disturbance, and planted them into a much bigger (10-inch) pot, filled with John Innes No.2 compost.


Each clump comprises several seedlings, so I think I will eventually need to separate them into individual plants and give each one its own pot. (I may be having a Plant Sale at that time!)



At the rate these are growing, they will probably need re-potting before the Autumn, and my plan is to bring a few of the plants indoors - or maybe into the garage (which has a window) - for the Winter. Although Lemongrass is a perennial, it is of oriental origin and I don't think it would take to kindly to being left outside over the Winter months. Of course, since I have so many plants I will be able to experiment, so I might just leave a couple outside to see what happens.




I would think that the plants would probably prefer to spend the Winter in a greenhouse or conservatory though.


Has anyone else in the UK tried growing Lemongrass? And if so, how did it go?

15 comments:

  1. Lemongrass is still hard to come by in my neck of the woods. Twice now I'v bought the last pack of two in a nearby supermarket and started the process of rooting in a glass of water. Soon I'll be able to plant them into a pot.
    I was going to write a blog post and all about it. :)

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  2. I have not grown it so far, but I guess I will be looking for seeds now. I use so much of it that some weeks it is the most expensive thing on the shopping list. Now if only I could grow lime leaves....

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    1. Pam, I got my Lemongrass seeds from Simply Seeds. http://www.simplyseed.co.uk/herb-seeds/lemon-grass-seeds.html 500 seeds for £1.49. Can't be bad!

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  3. I recall that it wasn't that long ago when I would scour the shops for lemongrass - well, about 15 years ago, but it certainly feels like not that long ago! I tried to grow it in a pot back then, but wasn't overly successful. I'm planning on giving it another go at some point as I've learned a few things since then :)

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  4. Something we have never tried growing.

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  5. I can't comment on growing it in the UK, but I have grown it here in the states for several years now. I've tried growing it from seed, but liked the plants I started from stalks better. I currently have one plant in a container and one in the ground, which I will dig up before winter comes. It's not hardy here for sure, but I've been able to keep it going over the winter under grow lights.

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  6. I've only found fresh lemon grass once over here, I will have to see if Simply Seeds will post to Ireland.

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  7. Hi Mark, glad your lemongrass is going well. It looks like it has advanced well in the past couple of weeks. I've tried overwintering lemongrass outside in an unheated greenhouse (unintentionally!) and it all died. It even died earlier in the spring when I put it out and the nights were still a bit cold. So I'd definitely recommend giving it warmth and tlc and then it will keep growing well. Good luck and enjoy the cooking!

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    1. I can see that Lemongrass will be vying for space on the windowsills next to the chillis this coming Winter!

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    2. I think so. My experience with lemongrass was similar – it very definitely didn't like any cold.

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  8. I didn't know you were born in Malaysia! Me too

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    1. Yes, I was born near Ipoh, in Perak. My parents were British English though.

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  9. Oh my, you are going to be inundated with lemongrass! :) A single mature plant has a spread of over 1m x 1m.
    I'm in a very different climate so can't say anything useful about growing it in the UK, but a couple things that I wish I had known:
    1) Starting from seed helps avoid transmitting diseases. I started mine from stalks and it's unfixably infested with lemongrass rust, which doesn't seem to hurt the taste or vigor of the plant but looks a mess.
    2) The edges of the leaves are finely serrated, so if you harvest or prune while wearing short sleeves your arms will get completely covered in shallow slashes.

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  10. Thanks for this guide, I've seen lemongrass in the shops but I wasn't sure what I could use it for. Maybe I'll try growing my own!

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  11. I bought 4 sticks of lemon grass last year and rooted them in water. They did eventually grow quite big. Sarah x

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