Nigella sativa (Black Cumin) Seeds

This is the nigella whose seed you cook with: one sowing gives you delicate flowers in summer and a jar of your own black seed by autumn. Nigella sativa is true black cumin, known as kalonji in Indian cooking and a close relative of love-in-a-mist. It makes a slim, upright plant with fine, feathery leaves and small pale blue to white flowers, followed by swollen seed pods packed with angular black seeds. The seed has a peppery, faintly onion-like flavour; scatter it over naan, flatbreads and Turkish breads, or toast it in oil at the start of a curry.

Sowing and growing

• Sow outdoors where it is to flower from late March to May; it needs no indoor start.
• Sow about 0.5 cm deep and thin seedlings to 20 cm apart.
• Germination takes 10 to 15 days.
• Full sun, in well-drained soil. Bees and butterflies visit the flowers.
• Grows to about 30 cm tall and 20 cm wide, so it suits a 30 cm pot on a sunny balcony.
• Flowers in summer; seed is ready in late summer, around 80 to 100 days after sowing.
• Annual: sow fresh each spring.

What you receive: a packet of about 100 seeds from Piccolo Seeds, with growing instructions on the back.

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