Cardamoms anyone? (Was Oxalis Tuberosa)
 

"A.Malhotra" wrote in
:
Victoria Clare wrote:

And can you actually grow cardamoms from, well, cardamoms from a
spice pot, or do you need special seed as per the catalogue? I am a
big cardamom fan, so if the leaves smell like the seeds, I shall soon
be acquiring a new house plant one way or the other. . .


I've no experience of trying to grow cardamom but I think that most of
the culinary stock would be rather too old to do well. Re growing it
as a houseplant, its quite a big plant, related to ginger.

But the plant itself is not
especially beautiful and I don't think any other part of the plant
carries the aroma. Anita

Very interesting - spurred on by this, I did some web research, and found
to my surprise that there are several plants referred to as 'cardamom' -
Elettaria cardamomum Maton seems likely to be the one you saw.

I did find some postings on various bulletin boards from people who were
mostly looking for advice themselves - but a number of them mentioned
scented leaves - maybe more noticeable when plant is inside in a pot?

I also found a few pics:
http://www.desert-
tropicals.com/Plants/Zingiberaceae/Elettaria_cardamomum.html and
http://plantsdatabase.com/go/862/

and it does indeed look very much like ginger. Been there, and it was a
bit dull, so I may not bother again.

According to http://www.sunderland.com/vi/mowgard.htm they were planning to
grow them in the Winter Gardens in Sunderland. Anyone been and know if
they do?

Victoria Clare

Cardamoms anyone? (Was Oxalis Tuberosa)
 

On Fri, 29 Nov 2002 13:28:19 +0000, Victoria Clare
wrote:

"A.Malhotra" wrote in
:
Victoria Clare wrote:

And can you actually grow cardamoms from, well, cardamoms from a
spice pot, or do you need special seed as per the catalogue? I am a
big cardamom fan, so if the leaves smell like the seeds, I shall soon
be acquiring a new house plant one way or the other. . .

i took some cardomoms with me to thailand and planted them in a garden
in what i thought would be ideal conditions but nothing.
plenty hot and humid too.
strange that the local thais had never seen them before.
i dont want to even contemplate growing curry leaves..