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Just curious, what ingredients are so important to you that you grow them yourself, make them, or make a great effort to obtain them.

For myself, I know only one green grocer in the area that has curry leaves ... luckily I can also slip in an excellent lunch with a friend in the 90 mile trip. Lovage, if I want fresh, I have to grow it myself. Shiso I can get a bit more easily than curry but in the quantities I want to use I need to grow it. Ground cherries my father taught me to love when it was illegal to grow them in the state ... underground produce fan by the age of 6. Although there are now varieties in the markets, they are far more astringent than the heirlooms my Dad taught me to love ... so I grow my own despite the climate being unreliable.

I think both hillsboroks and I live in magical places in the US when it comes to growing plants.  Willamette valley in Oregon is such an ideal place to grow plants and trees except citrus.  Our area in Silicon Valley was once known for various orchards. 

I grow lots of things.  Besides the usual herbs, i grow French tarragon, green and red shiso, ginger, Okinawan nira (cousin of garlic chives but shorter and less pungent), and myoga.  Myoga (zingiber mioga) is expensive to buy and even find in the US. 

For trees, we have yuzu and sudachi (used with seafood in Japan), two types of ume, one small and other normal sized, and kyoho grapes.  I make my own umeboshi.  The smaller ume for making into crunchy one and bigger one for  making into traditional umeboshi, ume wine and ume jam.  I love my yuzu and sudachi because they are expensive in the US and hard to find them.  Other Japanese fruit trees are fuyu persimmon, 20th century nashi ie pear apple and more common Fuji.  I planted these years ago when they were not so common. 

Started kyoho grapes from seeds.  I can find kyoho in my local Japanese market in season and just used those seeds to start mine.

I have tried twice to grow sansho Japanese pepper plant and failed both times. I may try again.  Sansho is used for kinome (leaves for fragrance) and seeds for pickling.  Sansho is similar to sichuan peppercorns.

Great effort to obtain would be soy beans from Iowa that I have been ordering for 20 years to make tofu, miso, and natto.  I find them fresh and tasty. Only wish the beans were smaller.  My husband uses the beans to make soy milk every 5 days on his own using a soy milk machine.  I don't use a machine to make tofu besides a blender. His soy milk maker makes too thin of soy milk for my purpose.

Here in bushfire, drought & flood land we have curry leaves, turmeric, bay, oregano, lemon thyme, french tarragon, sage, parsley, lemons, limes all growing in pots.. we've tried hydroponics for heritage  tomatoes, the mango tree sort of died with the last 4 years of drought.. and water has been pretty scarce & expensive to buy in (we rely on rain as no town water).. so no exotics ..thinking about getting a couple of finger limes (when I can find a decent and not too expensive nursery!)

No municipal water is hard.  You have big tanks to catch rain water?  Growing up we also had to pump groundwater.  Very cold water.  Had electricity though.  

I always have several herbs - rosemary, oregano, sage, basil, marjoram. I also like to have curry leaves because I rarely see in the store. But the plants are difficult to find and my plants always die eventually.

My husband grows for me Genovese basil, Thai basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, french tarragon, lemon grass, garlic chives, aspargus, different kinds of tomatoes, different kinds of peppers, bitter melons, loofas, potatoes, garlics and sometimes fuzzy melon, wintermelons and corn. We used to have a rhubarb, but one year while prepping the garden for planting, I dug it up with great effort because I mistook it as a weed, what an idiot. We used to have peach trees but the peaches were always kind of moldy, not edible, so they are gone. We also have a fig tree, but the last couple of years, the figs never got a chance to get ripe before the growing season ends, so this year he covered, the base of the tree with leaves to protect it from dying to the ground. He also planted several apple trees outside of the fenced in garden, but the deer decimated them before they have a chance to grow.

Fun question, mjes. I grow Concord grapes, raspberries, blackberries, sour cherries, sorrel, winter savory, okra, garbanzo beans, fenugreek, and different kinds of peppers, because these things are either not available to buy, or the quality/condition is poor. There might be a few others that I have forgotten at the moment. I would love to grow my own curry leaf and makrut lime trees, but they would have to be in pots and I don't think they'd survive the first winter indoors.

Originally Posted by: schambers

Fun question, mjes. I grow Concord grapes, raspberries, blackberries, sour cherries, sorrel, winter savory, okra, garbanzo beans, fenugreek, and different kinds of peppers, because these things are either not available to buy, or the quality/condition is poor. There might be a few others that I have forgotten at the moment. I would love to grow my own curry leaf and makrut lime trees, but they would have to be in pots and I don't think they'd survive the first winter indoors.

I have a friend with a kaffir lime tree that is in a pot and moved indoors for winter. He has been doing this for more than a decade. I don't know if makrut lime is more fussy. In my experience, a curry plant is easy to kill ;(

Originally Posted by: Barb_N

I have a friend with a kaffir lime tree that is in a pot and moved indoors for winter. He hasbeen doing this for more than a decade. I don't know if makrut lime is more fussy. In my experience, a curry plant is easy to kill ;(

I live in Washington DC and I have a curry leaf plant, a makrut lime tree and pandan plant in pots that come inside for winter. We learned after killing off our first curry leaf plant after bringing it inside that the plants need a grow lamp for the space that we have. (Basement- a sunny spot with several windows but not the warmest.)  Also, water them periodically but not too much. The lime tree is probably about seven years old now- we thought it had been killed by an inattentive housesitter when we were gone for four months a few years back but it came back when we returned and started watering it again. I would say that the plants definitely do NOT thrive being inside for winter. There always seems to be a period of shedding leaves and looking unhealthy, but they bounce back again in the summer when they go back outside. I would add that they seem to get a lot of spider mites (maybe due to the stress from coming in and out)- and its really important to kill those suckers before you bring the plants back inside.

I live in the Upper South in the US, where it freezes intermittently in the winter and is humid most of the year. I grow rosemary and lavender in a raised bed in full sun. The rosemary is a hardy variety that can survive down to about 8 deg F, which we get occasionally (but not in recent years). I also grow saffron crocus in those dry beds. It's a pain to harvest but I love being able to cook with my own saffron, and to give it to people who like to cook.

Every so often I try to grow basil. If the slugs don't get it, it tends to go from tiny and tender to woody and coarse almost overnight. Many people sell it at the local farmer's market; I need to ask them how they deal with its tendency to get nasty.

I grow herbs, and in our mild climate I'm able to have rosemary, sage, oregano and thyme year round. In the spring and summer lavender, tarragon, chives and several mints as well. I do not have luck with annuals like parsley and basil but can get them at the Farmer's market. I have a two year old makrut lime tree in a large pot. It has done extremely well and is spending its second winter wrapped in frost cloth. Our Meyer lemon is probably the one thing I couldn't be without. It gives us lemons all year round, although it has the most right now of any time.