Nigella (nigella) - Cultivation And Use

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The many-faced nigella - spice and beautiful flower

This unusually beautiful aristocratic plant has an incredible number of names.

Along with the official, derived from the Latin word "nickellus", there are a dozen more.

This is nigella (apparently because it has black, rather large seeds, very similar to the seeds of an ordinary onion, which we also call nigella), and "the girl in green", and Roman coriander, and Venus's hair, and black cumin.

And the British generally call her "love in the fog." There are also other, however, less poetic names.

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But this plant is distinguished not only by the abundance of names, but also by the variety of uses. Nigella looks amazing in flower beds: borders, rockeries and alpine hills.

Its delicate greenery and spectacular, star-like (blue, blue, white or purple) flowers can delight for 1.5-2 months. Fading away, it still remains beautiful - the dried seed pods of this plant can decorate any winter composition. At the same time, initially, in their homeland, Nigella was perceived not as a flower, but as a spice. And at the same time, Nigella has long been used in folk medicine.

In other words, it turns out that it is a spice, a flower, and a medicinal plant … Agree, this combination does not happen very often, although, of course, there are other edible and medicinal flowers at the same time, for example, nasturtium or vegetable chrysanthemum

Nigella is widespread enough in the Mediterranean, Southeast Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and Central Asia. But in large quantities as a spice, it is cultivated mainly in India and Egypt, while India is considered the main producer of this spice.

Nigella in cooking

Since India is the main supplier of this spice, it would probably be more correct to start our short culinary excursion from India.

Nigella is one of five ingredients in the popular Bengali punch-foron seasoning.

This seasoning is widely used in Indian cuisine, in dishes of lentils and vegetables, in canned food and chutneys (chutney is something like our ketchup, but with a lot of sugar and fruits). In its pure form, nigella seeds are added to tomatoes and eggplants, as well as in meat, fish and poultry dishes. The seeds are often mixed into bread, to which they give a peculiar peppery flavor.

Middle Eastern cuisine also uses the seeds of this plant (often mixed with sesame seeds) to bread and tortillas.

In Europe, because of its extraordinary aroma, this spice is used primarily in bakery and confectionery products - when baking pies, cookies, muffins (usually sprinkled on top before baking), as well as in compotes, jelly, jelly, puddings, etc. P.

In addition, nigella seeds are used for salting cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables, as well as for pickling cabbage. They are good for flavoring various vegetable dishes, salads and soups. And with Nigella flowers they even make gooseberry jam, it will then smell like strawberries.

Nigella seeds have a pleasant and subtle strawberry smell and a pungent peppery flavor. The seeds are ground immediately before use. This cannot be done in advance, because the spice will lose its incomparable aroma. As an example, I will cite one original Indian recipe with nigella, which can be prepared almost unchanged under our conditions.

Green beans with nigella

Boiled green beans - 500 g, vegetable oil - 3 tbsp. spoons, nigella seeds - 0.5 tbsp. spoons, red pepper - to taste.

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet, fry the nigella seeds with red pepper for a few seconds, and then add the chopped and pre-cooked green beans. Fry, stirring for about 7 minutes, add 2 tbsp. tablespoons of coconut milk (can be replaced with regular milk), salt, close the lid and simmer for another 7-10 minutes (until the water has completely evaporated). And that's all - you can serve it to the table.

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Nigella in medicine

In India, nigella is used as a stimulant and also to treat flatulence, indigestion and intestinal disorders. The enzyme lipase and vitamin E contained in the seeds have a beneficial effect on liver and pancreas diseases.

In Western medicine, nigella seeds are believed to normalize metabolism and improve brain function. They also help with throat diseases, with a runny nose, some types of headache, kidney and bladder stones, hemorrhoids and as a laxative.

What nigella loves and what she dislikes

In general, it can be considered a fairly unpretentious plant. But Nigella also has her own preferences:

- prefers light nutritious soils with a non-acidic reaction, withers on acidic soils, develops very slowly and, in the end, dies;

- despite the certain demands of the plant on fertility, the introduction of fresh organic and high doses of nitrogen fertilizers under the nigella can greatly delay the growing season - as a result, the plants will bloom very late and will not give ripe seeds; therefore, it is better to plant it after crops for which organic fertilizers were applied in the previous year;

- it is quite light-requiring, the plant blooms later in shaded places, and the seeds do not have time to ripen;

- does not tolerate thickened plantings, in this case you will not see either lush flowering or ripe seeds;

- Nigella is relatively cold-resistant, easily tolerates spring frosts;

- requires moderate moisture, reacts negatively to both excess and lack of moisture.

Nigella's agricultural technology

The plant blooms 60-65 days after sowing and blooms for about 1.5-2 months. After the end of flowering and before the seeds ripen, it takes more than a month.

Therefore, in the conditions of our Urals and other more northern regions, sowing nigella directly into the soil is quite unreasonable, even if you use it only as an ornamental plant. Unless your ridges will be prepared in the fall, and you will sow nigella in early May.

In this case, you can enjoy its bloom during July-August. But there is one danger associated with the peculiarities of our Ural climate, when in August it rains continuously and there are cold nights. Such conditions provoke the disease of Nigella with powdery mildew, which leads to the need to destroy the plants, since they no longer have any decorative effect, and there is no need to talk about seeds.

Therefore, if you choose this option, you need to take care of preventive measures in advance and twice during the growing season to spray the plants with the appropriate drug ("Topaz" and others similar to it).

In single-line plantings, the distance between plants is 6-7 cm. In two-line plantings, the distance between plants is increased to 10-15 cm, and between rows up to 15-20 cm. Sometimes, seedlings are planted even less often (depending on the power of the plants themselves).

You can go the other way by sowing the plant in a warm greenhouse or greenhouse in early April. Then there is a chance to observe flowering at a more favorable time: June-July and collect seeds that will ripen in late August or early September.

In addition, when growing nigella seedlings in a greenhouse, from the very beginning, it will be in more favorable conditions than sown in open ground. This means that plants will develop more actively, grow more beautiful, and flowering will be more abundant.

Nigella seedlings, when sown with dry seeds, appear, as a rule, on the 15-18th day, and germinated in sawdust - a week earlier.

In early June, plants can be safely planted in open ground. Until the seedlings get stronger after transplanting, it is advisable to cover it with a covering material to create more comfortable conditions.

Further, the care is usual: loosening, careful watering, mulching and preventive measures against powdery mildew.

Harvesting begins when 2/3 of the seeds are ripe. Plants are cut and dried in sheaves somewhere indoors (some of the seeds may crumble when drying, so it is better to spread something).

3-4 days after drying, the sheaves are threshed and the seeds are separated. Probably, for these procedures, there are some devices that facilitate this process, but I do everything manually. I rub the seed boxes with my hands: they open and the seeds fall out, and then, I sift them sequentially through two sieves.

First, through a sieve with large holes - this will separate the seeds from large plant residues (in this case, seeds with small debris are poured onto the newspaper - large debris remains in the sieve). Then I sift through a sieve with fine holes to get rid of fine dusty debris - fine debris is poured onto the newspaper, while seeds remain in the sieve.