The Wrong Nigella

My annual experiment has not yielded quite the results I was hoping for. Instead of Nigella flowers that look like this:


I’ve got flowers that look like this:


Bleah. The problem is, I grew Nigella sativa, from my spice seeds. The garden variety of Nigella is Nigella damascena. Whoops. While I may have a spice harvest, I am very disappointed to be missing the fantastic love-in-a-mist flowers.

I think I’ll sow poppies over my tulips next year, or make sure I have the right species of Nigella.

The Annual Experiment

Last year, I experimented with annual poppies as fillers in my magnolia bed and was thrilled with the results. It was the first year I made large use of annuals from seed. This year, to continue The Annual Experiment, I decided to sow nigella seeds over the bare spots left by the tulips. The only problem was, I couldn’t find nigella (aka Love in the Mist) seeds locally.

After coming home empty-handed, yet again, from the garden center, I remembered that I had a large container of nigella seeds, to be used as a spice, in the kitchen cupboard. I had bought the seeds after copying a number of Iranian recipes out of a novel last year. (I wish I could remember the name of the book. It was a great story about a pair of Iranian sisters who immigrated to Scotland and opened a restaurant there.) I’ve heard of people growing poppies (papaver somniferum) from the seeds available in the spice aisle of the grocery store, so nigella seeds should work too – as long as they weren’t toasted.

I sampled a seed to try and detect if they had been cooked, but, honestly, I couldn’t tell. They tasted dark and spicy, a little like a black mustard seed. Having never tasted nigella seeds before, I didn’t know if I was tasting the pre- or post-toasting flavor. Praying that my seeds were uncooked, I sprinkled them over the fading tulip foliage in early May. The perforated top of the container’s inner lid was quite handy for sowing.

It turns out that the seeds were NOT toasted. I have lots of thriving nigella seedlings pushing up through the tulip husks. Hooray! I’m looking forward to the other-worldy flowers. I doubt they’ll be in bloom by the date of my open garden, but I can always hope.

Now I’m wondering what else I could grow from my spice cupboard. An annual experiment, indeed!