Growing Ginger

I love ginger. Ginger in candy, ginger in tea, ginger in soups, but sadly our local store doesn't always have the greatest selection of ginger or the best price for ginger. Thankfully growing ginger is easy and the taste and freshness are superior to grocery store ginger. Being able to easily grow your own remedies is a wonderful thing.

Ginger about one and a half months after new shoots came up.

The part of ginger you typically cook with is the rhizome or the root. The rhizome has a substance called gingerol that is good for nausea, morning sickness, arthritis, and many more ailments. It is easy to grow and can be grown in the ground in many of the Southern states. It can also be grown in pots in the northern states. It is much easier to grow than I expected; it is a plant it and forget about it kind of plant. The first time I bought ginger to grow I bought it online from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Since then I bought some from a local herb farm that I love, called Maggie's Herb Farm. Make sure, when you buy ginger, that you are buying culinary ginger. There are many ornamental verities of ginger that are not edible.

Ginger needs a few basic things to grow successfully. Its main needs are good soil, some light, and warm weather. It does not like freezing temperatures, soggy soil, or direct sun. Planting ginger is easy. You plant in early spring. You dig a hole and plant it with the eyes facing upwards. These eyes become the shoots of the plant. Let it grow all year and when the leaves start dying you can dig your rhizomes up. My ginger is planted in pots that sit under a tree.

One of my pots of ginger with new shoots coming up

Some people say you can grow ginger from the roots you buy at the grocery store. I have never had luck with this. Grocery store ginger is sprayed with chemicals to keep it from growing. Some things say soaking it overnight will make it grow. I have not had success with this theory and recommend buying it from a reliable nursery locally or online. Once you get it started you can keep it going forever. Most of my ginger is two years old now and doing well in pots and planter boxes. In the last month or so it has grown from nothing to about 8 inches tall. It gets new shoots all the time. Ideally, I would love to find a place in my yard where I can have a large ginger patch. I have yet to find that place that is out of the way enough to let it take over.

Ginger can be harvested slowly over time by digging up a little bit and breaking or cutting off small chunks of the rhizomes as you need them or it can be harvested all at once. Some can be kept back to replant in the spring of the following year. I harvested only a small bit of my ginger last year. I started it late in the year and just broke off a small piece and left the rest to grow this year.

A rhizome of my two year old ginger plant.

Fresh ginger can be used in many recipes. I use minced ginger in soups, rice dishes, teas, marinades, sauces and so much more. It can also be used to make ginger tea or infused with other teas. It can be candied and sweetened, made into syrup, or dried and preserved for later use. If you want to use dried ginger without growing and processing it you can buy it online. One of my preferred brands is Frontier Herbs or from Penzey's.