Ginger Has It All: Attractive Foliage, Exotic Flowers and Delicious Roots

Those of you who enjoy the hot, spicy tang of ginger as a seasoning will find growing it in the home garden easy and practically care-free. Recently a reader sent me an e-mail and asked how she could grow ginger. This article gives you all the tips you need to harvest ginger at home.

First, you'll have to shop around for some ginger. Most supermarkets sell the Asian variety, which is plump and succulent and most desired for kitchen use. However, local markets often carry Jamaican ginger, which is smaller but very pungent.

Select roots (rhizomes, actually) that look healthy and are not wrinkled from dehydration. I'd suggest planting six palm-sized roots for a large family. Once you have acquired your ginger, you can prepare a space for them in the garden. I recommend planting ginger in areas around the main garden; the plants become permanent stands and can get in the way of annual garden vegetable production. Ginger plants make nice ornamentals, blooming August through October in most regions of Costa Rica.

Exotic Blooms: Ginger flowers bloom August to October in Costa Rica. Ed Bernhardt | Tico Times

For each rhizome, prepare an area 50 centimeters in diameter, well dug to 50 cm deep. Add a shovel full of aged compost and mix it well with the soil. Then plant one ginger rhizome very superficially in the center of your prepared circle. Cover with soil in such a way that you can see several of the buds protruding from the soil. Sunlight will activate the rhizome to produce new roots and leaves.

Now comes the time to be patient. It will be at least nine months before you can begin harvesting from your ginger plants. Meanwhile, keep the stands of ginger weed-free and cultivated. Ginger plants like to have soil tilled up around the base of the plant, which stimulates more production of rhizomes.

If new leaves look pale green, try foliar-spraying your plants, preferably with organic fertilizers such as compost tea or seaweed extract. Adding more compost around the base of the plant helps improve growth and production.

Ginger dedicates its first stage of growth to roots and vegetation, followed by production of new rhizomes. At this time, you can start treasure hunting in your ginger patch. Since new rhizomes grow close to the surface of the soil, you can lightly brush away the soil to uncover them. A sharp kitchen knife is useful for separating a new clone from the mother plant. That's right; each root is an identical genetic copy of the mother rhizome you planted.

If you leave about half of the new growth on each mother plant, you'll have a bumper crop for the following year, and will be able to harvest fresh ginger all year long.

For more info on home gardening in the tropics, visit www.thenewdawncenter.org or e-mail the newdawncenter@yahoo.com.