On growing the beautiful, flavorful curry leaf plant

This story first appeared on Food52, an online community that gives you everything you need for a happier kitchen and home – that means tested recipes, a shop full of beautiful products, a cooking hotline, and everything in between! "This is my second curry leaf plant," sighs Pak. What makes the curry leaf plant so finicky, Thomas says, owes to forcing it outside its native tropical climate into colder and drier ones where it must live indoors for part of the year: "In hot and humid places like Florida and Texas, and India, of course, it grows like a weed, so there's not much need to care for it." Grow it like a shrub As such, those in areas with a frost can't treat curry leaf plants like a "regular vegetable plant or lemon or orange tree," says Zainab "Zee'' Husain, co-founder of Sacramento-based heritage plant nursery Cultural Roots. She says a hard pruning every spring and regular pinchings will help the curry leaf plant's skeleton develop like a shrub, "which keeps it healthy, keeps the height down, and really helps with more leaf production."