Can anyone give me some information on growing ginger? I bought some
roots at the local food store that were beginning to sprout. I don't
expect much out of them; its more just a curiousity thing. But do
they need full sun? How tall do they get? Do they flower? When can
I move them from the pot to the garden?

IC Gardener
Iowa City, Iowa
Zone 5A

(and clearing snow off beds to prepare them for planting next week!)

In article , (IC_Gardener) wrote:
Can anyone give me some information on growing ginger? I bought some
roots at the local food store that were beginning to sprout. I don't
expect much out of them; its more just a curiousity thing. But do
they need full sun? How tall do they get? Do they flower? When can
I move them from the pot to the garden?

IC Gardener
Iowa City, Iowa
Zone 5A

(and clearing snow off beds to prepare them for planting next week!)

Gingers are tropical - so you may want to just transplant it to a larger
pot, unless you don't mind digging it up in the fall. Outdoors, they
don't like too much sun.

cheers,

Marj

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On 11 Mar 2003 08:05:43 -0800, (IC_Gardener)
wrote:

Can anyone give me some information on growing ginger? I bought some
roots at the local food store that were beginning to sprout. I don't
expect much out of them; its more just a curiousity thing. But do
they need full sun? How tall do they get? Do they flower? When can
I move them from the pot to the garden?

Plant the roots (rhizomes) shallowly in a pot (sandy, light soil,
'though they seem pretty happy in any sort of dirt). They *do* like
sun. I've never had the supermarket variety flower, but I may not have
given them enough sun.Ginger becomes an attractive, tall (2'+?) leafy
plant, and if successful, the rhizomes increase. It's a tropical
plant, so you can put in the garden when the soil is warm, but must
dig up or say "good-bye" to when frost threatens. I think ginger is
fun because it's so willing and eager to grow. You can dig up and
re-plant in fall, or over-winter in a warm sunny room.

Frogleg wrote:
(IC_Gardener) wrote:

Plant the roots (rhizomes) shallowly in a pot (sandy, light soil,
'though they seem pretty happy in any sort of dirt). They *do* like

If kept as an indoor plant, ginger will die down over winter, but it'll
come back in spring. Note, potted ginger roots taste more of dirt than of
ginger. You can eat the stalks of young leaves, though.

Henriette

--
Henriette Kress Helsinki, Finland
Over 40 MB herbal .html files (FAQs, classic texts, articles, links), plus
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I put some fresh ginger roots that I purchased from my local farmer's market
into my garden a few months ago. They started sprouting and now have leaf
stalks around 1 foot high. I live in SE Florida - zone 10 so my main gardening
season is the fall and winter. Summers are completely dead for me - way too hot
and wet to grow many items.

I just bought some more ginger root and will be planting that in my garden
within the next day or two. For the rest of the world here is what I found in
Deni Bown's book The New Encyclopedia of Herbs & Their Uses: Plant ginger in
well-drained, rich, neutral to alkaline soil, in sun or partial shade, with
high humidity. Ginger is treated as an annual or biennial crop.; plants need a
10 month growing season for optimum rhizome production. Oldest growths may be
removed when new shoots apear. They are hardy from zone 7 to zone 11. Ginger
is a perennial - so I guess I could leave it in the ground forever if I was
growing it as an ornamental as opposed to wanting to harvest it for
culinary/medicinal uses. It can grow up to 5 feet high and has yellow-green
flowers, with a deep purple, yellow-marked lip (mine haven't flowered yet).

I would try growing them indoors too in a medium to large container in a well
lighted area. That way you could over winter them in areas colder than zone
7-11 then plant them outside during the summer or just keep the container
outside during the summer.

Hope this information helps, take care,
Lynn Smythe
Delray Beach, FL
coming soon: www.butterflygypsy.com