If you are fond of home-baked bread or cooking smoked meats, then you are familiar with the basic spices that are invariably used for this. Among the other most commonly used seasonings, ordinary cumin has gained its popularity due to the exceptional fragrant spicy aroma and the burning bitter taste of its fruits.
Cultivated for our conditions, ordinary caraway originates from the countries of southern and southeast Asia. It is considered that the wild ancestor of this two-year-old plant of the umbelliferous family is Indian caraway seeds, which differs from ours by its earlier ripening period and smaller fruits. The aroma characteristic of our culture has also changed (the ancestor has coniferous shades), and the taste of Indian caraway is sweeter, and the color of its fruits is darker. In India, other names for this plant are used: ayovan or Coptic cumin. In some Indian states, you can still see wild plantings of caraway seeds, although, for the most part, it is actively cultivated.
Thanks to the warm and humid climate, Indian caraway seeds begin to bloom in early May, ahead of their ripening northern varieties by a month and a half. The cultivation of Indian caraway seeds is occupied not only by rural residents of India, this crop also gives good crops in Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, the states of Central Asia, North and East Africa. Of these countries, for the most part, Indian cumin is imported into our country.
Fans of the characteristic aroma and taste of the Indian spice may try to grow it in their garden, but most likely this experience will be unsuccessful. But it is possible to grow zoned varieties of ordinary caraway seeds on your site. It will have to be planted in a place well lit by the sun, otherwise flowering can not wait. Caraway seeds are not very demanding on the ground, but avoid sowing them on acidic or swampy soils, with groundwater close to the surface. Despite this, caraway seeds require careful watering, especially during the period of stem growth.
The soil prepared for planting caraway seeds, in early spring, should be carefully barred immediately after the appearance of weeds, and loosen all the time of growth. In the first year, as we said earlier, one should not expect a harvest of fruits. Soil can be fertilized during this period with 12-15 grams of potassium salt, 25-30 grams of superphosphate and 2-3 kg of manure per one square meter of sown area. The depth of seeds should be at least 2.5 cm, and the distance between the rows should be 20 cm. After 25-30 days after the appearance of the first seedlings, the first mineral dressing is carried out with equal parts of ammonium nitrate, potassium salt and superphosphate. The second top dressing is carried out through the same period, but already without the use of ammonium nitrate. In the second year of cultivation, the first inflorescences appear already in early to mid-June.
Harvesting of seeds is carried out after the onset of milk freshness in them, as soon as most of the seeds become brown. There are general recommendations for cleaning them. To get fragrant caraway seeds, you should produce it by pulling the whole plant out of the ground so that the fruits reach their ripeness, being on the stem of a plant that has a rhizome. Plants collected in this way are bound in sheaves and left on the field or dried in the room to reduce losses. After drying the sheaves (in the usual case this occurs within a few weeks after harvesting), the crop is threshed and stored in a dry place and in a covered container. The guaranteed shelf life of such a crop is three years. But the caraway seeds grown on its site will have a particularly bright aroma and taste of the fruit. We only note that it is possible to squeeze very valuable oil from caraway seeds, which is used both in cooking and as a therapeutic drug.