Tamarind
Tamarindus indica
Only a long, hot season brings pods — and a mature tree wants eight meters of room to itself.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and a long hot season before it will fruit.
- Watering
- Regular water while young; drought-tolerant once it is established.
- Feeding
- One balanced feed a year, in spring.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Shape it while young; a mature tree needs almost nothing done to it.
- Mar–May Bud Break
- May–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Sep Fruit Set
- Sep–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- In-row spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- Between rows
- 49 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 59–98 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Tamarind’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Mealybugs White cottony sap-suckers that gather in leaf axils and along stems, mostly on houseplants and under glass. Dab colonies with a cotton swab dipped in soapy water and isolate affected plants.
- Scale insects Immobile brown or white bumps fixed to stems and leaf undersides, sucking sap and weakening growth. Wipe off with a damp cloth or dab with horticultural soap; watch for the sooty mold that follows.
- Powdery mildew A white dusty coating over leaves and shoots when roots are dry but the air is humid. Keep plants watered and mulched, prune for airflow, and remove the worst leaves.
- Root & crown rot Root rot in waterlogged soils
- Fruit borers
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
Lemongrass, Moringa, Banana, Chilli pepper
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com