No, lack of fertilizing is unlikely to be the cause of lack of taste. They are weeds where they grow native. Usually the main "fertilizing" concerns are getting enough iron to them or they go chlorotic from iron deficiency. I fertilize with some iron in the summer when I put them out but missed it this year. They mostly still look ok though. I can't really tell from the picture but that sort of looks like M. koenigii and sort of doesn't. If there's an issue with scent or flavor its more likely an issue of the variety than whether or not you fertilized. It actually still has a way to go before you could consider it productive. From whence cometh your plant? I'm wondering if it came from a tried and true mother plant or if it is of more anonymous provenance. Nearly all my seedlings did eventually sprout, plus I got some freebie "daughter" plants, and they all smelled like curry leaf plant from the time they sprouted. Just brush them and there is the aroma. I lost a few to container mix experimentation and then a few more to lack of watering when I had a long illness, but I still have 15 or 20 mostly good sized plants now (with some experimentation victims gradually trying to catch up with their more fortunate peers). It's still too small to flower or set fruit, neither of which are likely to happen if it doesn't get plenty of warm weather and proper lighting. Outside mine do better in light shade (I am in a desert region with fierce fierce sun); inside they do better in the strongest sunlight I can manage. You are correct in your assumption, now is not the time to fertilize. With what do you fertilize, btw, and what are you using for your container mix?

Hi. I am looking for a curry leaf plant for my grandmother for our backyard. We can’t find any locally. Can anyone please share? We are in Miami,FL. Please email me at jivanirani@gmail.com. I can swing by to collect. Thank you!

Manzanitacrow, you can try posing in the plant exchange forum to request a seedling. I got my seedling from a coworker. He told me that there are tons of seedlings around his mother plant. The unfortunate thing is that my plant does not seem to grow at all. I transplanted it in the ground and it still has not done much for the whole summer. I have to soon dig it up and overwinter in the house in a pot.

In my experience curry leaf tree does VERY poorly in direct sun. it is grown in the "understory" in India because that is where it grows naturally. I LOVE the smell of the leaves! I love cooking with curry leaf. Mine are in fabric pots in a medium of Growstone 2 and peat moss, topped by bark mulch to keep the Growstone from floating up. I had them in a gritty-like mix that did not work for them at all. The survivors of that experiment are also in the Growstone/peat medium now. All the plants that were originally planted into the Growstone/peat mix are 2 to 5 times larger than the others - the longer it took me to get them out of the gritty-like, the smaller they are (plus the last of those died before I could repot them). The largest plants, which were in Growstone/peat from the start, are flowering now. I hope to harvest some seed and start some more, but I'm not holding my breath. They REALLY need to be fertilized - I should have hit them with some iron last year and didn't get around to it, now they're recovering from that shortage. I put them out yesterday because it was supposed to be 55F last night (I never put them out unless the night time temps are above 50) and when I woke up this morning it was 42F. Drat. So I may get blossom drop instead of fruits, LOL! Growstone is allegedly pretty alkaline, my tap water here is about 9, and peat is pretty acidic. They get along OK anyway. I have no idea what the needs of the plant are because I have never been able to find anyone in the US who knows anything about them. Except that they need more iron than most plants (hence the iron supplementation which should happen at least every couple of years but hasn't happened but once since I planted them). I've been told to use Palm fertilizer on them but I usually just use Miracle Gro every couple of years, or a JOB plant spike or 3. Plus the extra iron supplementation. They are tolerant of drying out. In the Growstone/peat mix winter before last, I was very ill, and they didn't get watered for about 3 months. I lost several of the remaining gritty-like plants but all the Growstone medium plants were fine. That medium REALLY holds the moisture, without ever getting waterlogged. Since then the last of the curry-leaf tree in the gritty mix have died. They just didn't do well in that mix. But everything in the Growstone are still doing OK. How big is your plant? I'm not sure what kind of information you are looking for. Pretty nearly everything I know about M. koenigi is here: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/1843090/potting-medium-for-citrus?n=15