Monday, June 8, 2009

Tamarind

I love Tamarind pods. They are sweet and sour and I ate them often as a boy. Tamarind trees grew large in the hot sun of the Sonoran desert. A couple of years ago, I ate some pods that I bought at the store and threw the seeds into a flower pot. Some months later, I was surprised to find baby tamarind trees growing in the pots.
I've managed to keep them alive in the hopes that they will grow in a container and maybe, just maybe, give me a pod or two. Here's one of them in a pot outside loving this 90 degree weather:


Here is a picture of my only Mini-Bell bell pepper plant. I originally grew a number of these from seed but I lost all of them except for this one. Next year I won't be so careless. This picture doesn't really show the number of peppers growing on this plant.


I have baby Brandywines! Last year, I did not stake my Brandywine plants properly and I came home one day after a storm to find them broken in half. I don't remember now if I even got to eat one Brandywine tomato last year.

Here's a picture of one of my Galina tomato plants. For some reason I have 4 of these plants. I hope the tomatoes are tasty.

My melon bed got wiped out early in the Spring during all the rain we got. I replanted Sugar Baby watermelon, both Red and Yellow and Minnesota Midget cantaloupe. They are doing ok so far. Some of them even have blooms.


I continue to have trouble growing radishes to full size. This is as big as they get for me. A lot of them never grew a bulb. I've heard several theories regarding this. I will keep on trying though because I love radishes.

I checked on my rain barrels and I have two full barrels (95 gallons). Cool.

Over and out.

3 comments:

  1. Hi David, actually, I have kind of forgotten how a tamarind tree looks like till I saw the picture posted here. We use dried tamarinds for cooking here. I like the sour taste when cooked with fish. Those Galina tomatoes, are they not heavy? I hope they would not fall off. Oh, regarding your question in my blog, the type of caladium that loves the sun is easy to take care ;-)

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  2. Stephanie,
    When I lived in Kansas City, I worked with some Philipino ladies that could make some wicked sauce with tamarinds.
    The Galina tomatoes are cherry tomatoes so they are about as big as they will get.

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  3. WOW! Your garden is so far along! I love that little tamarind tree. I tried to grow tamarind from seeds, but they never germinated, which is really weird because I've read that seeds from boxes of pods will germinate! I'll have to try again just because it's such in important ingredient. Yum!

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