After so much dry weather and an unseasonably warm fall, the cold weather has arrived. And it's still dry. Red Fire Warning, Cold Weather Warning, and yes, the Hong Kong Observatory has issued the Frost Warning at 4:21pm.

Hong Kong Observatory warns farmers and others concerned that ground frost is likely to occur tonight and early tomorrow morning on high ground and in the northern part of the New Territories.

Happy New Year's Eve! Stay warm tonight.

While cleaning up the containers on the roof from the ravages of Tropical Storm Pabuk, I noticed this rather by accident.

The tree, an annona squamosa or sugar apple/sweetsop, is less than 2 years old. I've been too busy to up pot a lot of my plants this summer, so this one is still in it's first transplant pot. 5 inch deep pot and the tree itself now measures 25 inches (including the 5 inch deep pot).

Totally unexpected. I'm flabbergasted.

So I haven't done a gardening post in a long long time, and it's been grey and unseasonably cold the last week.

It was a miserable fall with pests galore. A lot of my plants took quite a beating as they were sucked and munched by leaf miners and mealy bugs and mites of various sorts. For example , a 桃花 (tou4 fa1 - peach flower - prunus persica) that I bought for the 2006 Chinese New Year suffered through cytospora canker and recurrent mite infestations. It sat for months as a pot of sticks at the end of last year after defoliating the last mite attack.

So with the Chinese New Year arriving and no sign of life from last year's peach shrub, I went to the CNY fair at Victoria Park to buy a new one. The prices were much higher this year than last. I did a quick swing around the flower stalls asking the prices on potted tou4 fa1 and they were all HK$180 and up, except one. This family from Guangzhou was selling theirs for HK$80. SOLD!

桃花 - tou4 fa1 - peach blossoms
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And when the weather warmed up after CNY, the 2006 peach shrub showed signs of life again.

桃子 - tou4 ji2 Peach
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And if one doubts the connection between tou4 fa and tou4 ji2, an application of the plant lover's favourite sex toy (a cotton swab) has produced a few fuzzy little green peaches. I have doubts whether a plant this size can maintain the development of a full-sized peach or the taste of this variety of peach, but the little fuzzy green things are fun to look at anyway.

FROST WARNING

URGENT - FOR ALL BROADCASTING STATIONS

HONG KONG OBSERVATORY WARNS FARMERS AND OTHERS CONCERNED THAT GROUND FROST IS LIKELY TO OCCUR EARLY TOMORROW MORNING IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THE NEW TERRITORIES.

DISPATCHED BY HONG KONG OBSERVATORY AT 16:31 HKT ON 08.01.2007

Pak Tam Chung is currently reporting 4.8°C (~41°F), Ta Kwu Ling is reporting 6.9°C and Shek Kong and Sheung Shui are reporting 8.3/8.4°C and Shatin and Tsuen Wan are reporting 10.1°C (~50°F). For homes without any heating that's pretty damn cold.

So the pulp and paste from these trees' seed pods will be sour, though refreshingly fruity.

Tamarind Seed Pods
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Throw it in to a swimming pool and it might be as effective as a Baby Ruth bar. Crack open the thin but hard shell on these seed pods and you'll find seeds covered in a reddish purple paste-like pulp. Most commonly you'll find tamarind paste sold at the supermarket as a small block that you soak in boiling water to produce a sour fruity liquid.

Tamarind is used heavily in Indian and Thai cooking for chutneys, soups, and curries. An alternative sour flavour to limes. According to the post at the General's yesterday about the most hypocritical anchor baby, al Quesadilla uses them to flavour candies that appeal to young people. I've also seen recipes from the Caribbean for Tamarind-Ginger Sodas. Spicy, Sour, and Sweet with a fizz.

Tamarind as a tree belong to the Legume family along with the peas, peanuts, and soybeans. Looking at the first photo from yesterday, you can see the seed from the tamarind looks at first glance a lot like a soybean. Like its cousins the tamarind will fix nitrogen with its roots, which makes the tree popular with soil restoration projects. The tamarind tree though will grow to 80 or 100 feet with a possible trunk circumference of 25 feet. A far cry from any soybean bush, and not bad for something starting out in a yogurt cup.

So we've entered the third week of Guess The Food.

As New Sprouts
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A Few Weeks Old
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A few hints: These will grow in to very large trees. The food item is important to Thai and Indian cooking and in a message from The General, it seems the brown-skinned menace al Quesadilla has chosen it as the replacement for Hershey's chocolate bars. I guess that makes me a suspicious character that may be commiting treason by aiding and abetting brown skinned people in their efforts to rule the world one tastebud at a time.

As always, leave your guesses in the comments (complete with gravatar support) and I'll post the answer tomorrow.

So the answer for yesterday's Guess The Food: Round 2 is:

click on the image for the background on man-date Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, the White House Press Corps member cum male escort showing off his member

Oh wait, that's a man-date. And I'm not growing man-dates.

I am growing small date palms. If you look carefully at the photos, you can spot the dates a small distance from the base of the baby palm tree.

Specifically these are from a pack of dates from Tunisia of the Deglet Nour variety. Date palms are either male or female and there isn't a way to spot the difference until they flower. So unless I have 1 male and 1 female, I'm not going to see dates. I may not see dates anyway, because the heat and humidity in Hong Kong is far different from that of the North African desert.

Even so, it's been fun getting the seeds to germinate and we'll see how the plants grow from here.

It's Tuesday which means it's time for Guess The Food again. I had some bad luck with seed germination on this one. Only two survived out of the pack that I ate.

click on the image for a larger size image

Feel free to leave your guesses in comments and I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Okay, so the responses didn't get posted here, but nobody got the answer correct.

I should have said that all of the plants in the photo were the same. The difference between the two seed flats (plastic egg carton halves sitting in cut open milk cartons) was how the seeds had undergone winter simulation. An experiment as to how much cold was needed for this food was refrigeration versus time in the freezer.

The food? A white pomegranate. Now the question is will the seed develop true to the parent and produce white fruit.

click on the image for a larger view

So it's been a while since I've done a gardening post. Winter is over and things are growing again. Some of these items are from seeds collected from various food items found in Hong Kong markets.

Can you guess the food these plants came from?
click on the image to get a better look