One of the discoveries I made while perusing Tasha Greer’s “Grow Your Own Spices” (Cool Springs Press, 2021) is that the licorice plant is suitable as a garden selection throughout Southern California. As long as winter temperatures do not dip below 15 degrees Fahrenheit, you can grow this vigorous perennial that develops into a five-foot-tall shrub with highly ornamental flowers. (Note: this is the confectioner’s licorice and bears no relation to Helichrysum petiolare, an attractive ground cover that is also referred to as licorice plant due to its scent.)
No, you will not see black and red Twizzlers hanging from its stems, but you will be able to enjoy chewing on its sweet roots and rhizomes, which provide flavoring to commercial licorice. Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) flowers will remind you of those you see on clover, and this is not a coincidence since clover and licorice are both legumes, meaning they make their own nitrate fertilizer with the help of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These bacteria live in root nodules of all legume family members and alleviate the need for application of nitrogen fertilizers. Legumes include peas, beans, and many drought-tolerant trees such as carob, mimosa (Albizzia julibrissin), Cassia, Acacia and mesquite species, and any plant that produces pods. Because of their drought tolerance and self-fertilizing capacity, leguminous trees are recommended for desert planting.
Licorice is somewhat water needy, especially when young, but will produce a strong root system as well as rhizomes. This means you can detach rhizomes for culinary, confectionary, or medicinal use without disturbing the roots. It is recommended that you leave the roots and rhizomes in the ground at least three years in order to appreciate their beneficial properties. Greer writes that “the medicinally potent glycyrrhizin will intensify if plants are grown for 5 years.” Licorice “shines in its ability to coat and soothe irritated tissue in the digestive and respiratory tracts” and you can “use the dried root to make a sweet cup of tea.” Just be careful not to overdo consumption of licorice extract since “high doses can cause high blood pressure and other potentially serious side effects.”
Although the above licorice species is native to the Mediterranean, there is another species indigenous to many areas of the United States, including California. Known as wild or American licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota), it attracts butterflies with its white flower clusters. Seeds of the American as well as the European licorice species are widely available through Internet vendors.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and turmeric (Curcuma longa), which are closely related plants, are highly sought after by cooks and apothecaries alike. I asked Greer, whose spice garden and greenhouse are in North Carolina — but who grew up in La Habra in Orange County, moved to Bloomington in the Inland Empire, and went to college in Santa Barbara — if we can grow ginger and turmeric in our part of the country. Her answer was yes.
You don’t have to go far to find the rhizomes of these plants if you wish to grow them in your garden. They are readily available at most supermarkets. Make sure the rhizomes you take home have eyes from which shoots will sprout. Greer informed me that these rhizomes are sometimes sprayed with growth retardant to prevent them from sprouting on the supermarket shelf and therefore, when you take them home, make sure to soak them for several hours if you wish to sprout them yourself for eventual planting outdoors.
This is the ideal moment to procure your ginger and turmeric rhizomes. Greer places them on a warm kitchen counter near her refrigerator and watches them sprout during the winter. Then, in March, she plants them outside. Although she grows hers in a greenhouse, she says we will be able to nurture them outdoors in Southern California as long as we are aware of their need for steady soil moisture. Morning sun with afternoon shade is their recommended exposure.
In addition to detailed growing and propagating instructions, “Grow Your Own Spices” includes the medicinal benefits of each spice. Turmeric is singled out as “one of the top-selling herbal supplements in America. It’s endorsed for its efficacy at reducing joint pain in inflammatory conditions such as arthritis. The anti-oxidant activity can also help stave off degenerative illnesses associated with aging.”
I have always thought of cinnamon, allspice and the black pepper that accompanies salt on every dinner table as tropical spices that no one living outside of equatorial regions should consider growing. Not so, Greer informed me. As long as you grow these plants in containers, you can keep them outside in Southern California most of the year and then continue their cultivation indoors when nighttime temperatures drop in the fall.
The trick here is to make sure they have an excellent source of supplemental light — even while positioning them near windows — when you bring them inside. Greer recommends LED light for this purpose. LED light is conveniently projected from gooseneck lamps, be the single head or 3-head desk lamps. She turns her supplemental lighting on in the morning and shuts it off at night.
It’s not too late to acquire bulblike corms of the lavender-flowered Crocus sativa whose bright crimson stigmas (female flower parts) will be a source of saffron for you when the flowers bloom. Saffron crocus is of Mediterranean origin and thus, unlike crocus species from a cold winter habitat, saffron crocus corms do not require vernalization (cold treatment) in order to start growing in the spring. In addition to use as a culinary spice, make a saffron tea from the stigmas that offer “potent antidepressant effects capable of uplifting people’s moods.”
Juniper berries are used to make gin but can also be utilized to flavor brandy and vodka. Not every juniper species is suitable for this purpose but one of them is a California native (Juniperus californica) that grows into a 30-foot tree. Dry the berries and then “make your own cordials by soaking a tablespoon or two in a bottle of brandy or vodka for a few weeks to extract the flavor. Add honey and rosemary to make it sweeter and more botanical tasting. Sieve and serve.”
Tip of the Week: Ginger lilies – related to culinary ginger but not of interest in the kitchen — are possessed of flowers known for both fragrance and exotic beauty. Few members of the ginger family flower in our area, which is insufficiently tropical for many of them to bloom, but ginger lilies are the exception. White ginger lily (Hedychium coronarium) is the most fragrant while Kahili ginger lily (Hedychium gardnerianum), with 18″ torch-like yellow flower clusters accented with red stamens, is more commonly seen. Kahili ginger, which grows to a height of eight feet, spreads out dramatically in a lightly shaded garden. Variegated shell ginger, which I spotted growing in the Los Angeles Zoo, has arresting green and yellow striped leaves and serves stunningly as an indestructible rhizomatous ground cover.
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