9 facts about aromatic caraway

Caraway is not only useful in the kitchen but has some other uses as well. Here's how to plant it and use it in your own garden.

• The seeds of caraway can dissipate gas problems and have a calming, antispasmodic effect on the gastrointestinal tracts.
• It is therefore advised in cases of flatulence, colic and bloating. Slightly drying/draining, it is also prescribed with other herbs for diarrhea.
• Do not exceed the quantities used in cooking if you are pregnant or breastfeeding/lactating.

• Caraway seeds flavour rye bread, soups, sausages, cabbage dishes, cheese, dishes with pork, goulash and baked apples, as well as some spirits such as Kummel.
• You can use its leaves in salads and soups.
• They have a flavour of parsley and dill mixed together.

Caraway is a robust biennial or perennial plant, with divided leaves resembling those of the fern and whose tapered root can be cooked as a vegetable.

• The flowering stem, which measures about 60 centimetres, bears umbels with small white flowers speckled with pink, which are followed by striped, crescent-shaped seeds.
• Because of its common appearance, it is better to plant it among other vegetables or herbs rather than as an ornamental plant.
• Label the plant carefully, because its foliage resembles that of parsley and carrots.

Here are some varieties of caraway:

• Sprinter is a very productive variety, and its seeds do not fall as soon as they are ripe, which makes it easier to harvest.
• Ajmud (Carum roxburghianum syn. Trachyspermum roxburghianum), a popular spice in India with aromas of celery and caraway.
• Ajowan (also known as Ajwain) (Trachyspermum ammi syn. Carum copticum), with the peppery scent of thyme and anise, and related to caraway.

• Caraway needs fertile soil, heat and full sunlight.

• Caraway does not transplant well.
• It is best to sow it directly into the ground in spring, spacing the plants 15 centimetres apart.

• Weed and water regularly because the seed is slow to germinate.

• Caraway is rarely attacked by pests.

• Pick the leaves at any time. Harvest the roots before the beginning of flowering.
• Cut the flower stems before the seeds begin to mature and hang them upside down on top of sheets of paper to recover the dried seeds.