cardamom

[imafan26]

I just divided my cardamom today. The leaves are also very fragrant. Does anyone else grow cardamom and how do you use it. I actually do not allow my cardamom to mature. It would be 10 ft tall so it may never bloom for me. I just divide it and give it to the garden center for their plant sale. It fetches a good price $10 for a gallon pot. It is not easy to find and it can be used in sweet and savory dishes.

[HoneyBerry]

That is a good plant choice. I love Indian food so I buy cardamom once in a while. I have never tried to grow it, but it would be a fun plant to try.

[imafan26]

I have used cardamom spice to make cookies, and I have some pods. The leaves though are really fragrant. It is very distinctive. That helps to identifiy them because I have got a few different kinds of gingers in my yard and unless they bloom some of them look a lot alike.

[HoneyBerry]

I looked up the zone for cardamom. It's not for my zone. Darn.
I don't do indoor gardening. That's what it would take for a tropical plant in my zone 8A. There are many tropical plants that I would love to grow but it's too cold here.

[imafan26]

Cardamom prefers to be in the shade for me too. I have just trained it to be out in the sun. It would have to be kept indoors where there is frost but in frost free zones it should do fine. Gingers here can take over, so I keep them in pots. The cardamom was already digging into the ground and I had to sacrifice the pot to get it out. I divided it into 4 parts. After it gets over the shock, I will take the extras down to the garden.

[HoneyBerry]

Ginger . . . mmmm. You had me craving cardamom spiced cookies yesterday and now you got me thinking about ginger. I think I am going to make some ginger tea. Cardamom supposedly makes a good cup of tea too, so I'll have to try that sometime.

[imafan26]

My ginger and turmeric are blooming now. I should be able to harvest them soon, but I usually wait as long as I can so they don't have to be dormant too long and start shrinking.

[HoneyBerry]

Tumeric too? You have made some good plant choices. Ginger, tumeric & cardamom make some very healthful teas.

[applestar]

I never even thought about growing cardamom because I thought pods would be hard to achieve here. But if the leaves can be used as well, maybe I should see if I could get a plant -- see I don't even have a clue where I might get one, which goes to show I haven't looked at all.

I do have my sights on cinnamon, black pepper, and vanilla plant source that I might buy eventually.

I also just found out about "long pepper" that I was going to look around for.... Had not even heard of the spice itself until I was searching for recipe for Old Bear's hot spiced/mulled wine (Game of Thrones). I'm going to look for it (the spice) at the local southeast asian grocery I heard about when I go look for galangal.

[digitS']

I see cardamom mentioned by cooks. Maybe I've had it before.

Ginger is a favorite. I know turmeric and galangal. What's cardamom?

Is it licorice-like?

Steve

[HoneyBerry]

It is often used in Indian recipes. It has a unique flavor, hard to describe. It is used in baking and main dishes. It makes a healthful tea. It is a health food store favorite.

[HoneyBerry]

I'm having Cardamom Coffee right now. It's really good. Mmmmm.

[digitS']

Oh yeah?!

I like figs ... fresh, canned and dry .

The other day, as I often do, I was eating dry figs and having coffee. A memory came back to me from childhood. My mother was a health food store customer and she would buy coffee substitutes. I didn't like Postum but another one was made with figs.

I checked to see if something like that is still available. It should be, fig and coffee flavors are compatible. It must not be the same company from back in the 50's, but there is still a hot fig beverage! I hope it is at a nearby store but I can buy it online .

Steve. Uh, i think that this was a ways off-topic.

[HoneyBerry]

I'm a sucker for health food and health food stores. I have access to fresh figs at the local health food store. Figs taste so amazing fresh. Nothing like the fig newtons I had as a kid. I thought then that figs tasted like the fig filling in fig newtons. Back then, I didn't even know what a real fig looked like. I was pretty sure that figs didn't look like fig newtons when they were picked from the fig tree. I lived in suburbia and was so far removed from the farm world. I've reconnected to that world by way of the health food store that has real figs and heirloom apples and heirloom tomatoes and meyer lemons and organic fennel and tri-colored carrots with the tops still on them. I am now a farmer wanna-be. Who'd ever thought that I would become such an earth mama.

[imafan26]

I just read something today that said that there are a lot of things being sold as eletaria cardamom which is misidentified.
What is labeled as eletaria is really Alpinia nutans. It is sometimes called dwarf cardamom and does have fragrant leaves that smell like cardamom.

Sandmountain herbs sells seeds for eletaria cardamom, but the flower they have on the website is not eletaria. It is on the top of the plant and it is large and yellow and white.

Cardamom flowers come out from the base of the plant and are mostly white with purple splashes. According to the comments from Dave's garden. Cardamom leaves are not supposed to be fragrant.

Now, I am wondering, if I have the dwarf cardamom instead. It was labeled eletaria cardamom, but it was a gift so I don't know where the person who gave it to me got it from. We had another plant in the garden that was labeled cardamom that we pulled out because the flowers and the pods looked more like an ornamental ginger and not cardamon. the pods were the wrong shape.

This plant is being divided often and kept small so I do not expect it to bloom. Now, I am wondering if I really have the right plant.

[HoneyBerry]

Interesting. So I looked it up and found that you can tell if it is real cardamom by the leaves. Apparently, Alpina Nutans has glossy fragrant leaves and True Cardamom does not and both are great plants with medicinal uses.

[pepperhead212]

Imafan,

I don't know much about growing cardamom, though I did look into black cardamom a few years ago. I knew I wouldn't be able to grow it around here, but thought I may be able to at least get some leaves, which are aromatic, and are wrapped around some foods before grilling, in northern Thailand. The trees get to 5 meters, and require a much longer growing season than I have, and I gave up on the idea, since I couldn't find seeds anywhere. I was surprised that it is related to green cardamom (both in the ginger family), though a lot of its flavor comes from the drying method, giving it that smoky flavor. The pods are probably too large to air-dry, and rot, like thick fleshed peppers, and eons ago they probably began drying over fire, as with chipotles, and several other chiles, giving us these wonderful smoky spices.

[imafan26]

The cardamom I have I got as a gift that was in a 2 inch pot that was maybe three inches tall. Since I keep it in a gallon can and never allow it to get bigger than three feet, I do not expect it to bloom. The leaves of the one I have are very fragrant and they are glossy. The site I read said that true cardomom should not have fragrant leaves. I looked around and different sites showed flowers that did not look like eletaria cardamom but was being sold as eletaria. The flowers and pods were how we identified that the one we had originally in the garden was the wrong one.

[imafan26]

Maybe you moved it too quickly especially if you have that much heat, the window without a filtering curtain could have magnified the sun. Cardamom is an understory plant so it usually is not grown out in the open. Maybe artificial light would have bee better. I don't use manure in containers. If you put too much it will burn and kill the plant as will too much water. Plants like to be kept evenly moist but not soggy.