Above you see the start of some ginger and turmeric plants. These are just a few ounces of off-the-shelf organic ginger and turmeric roots, from the grocery store, cut/broken into pieces, soaked for a bit, pressed into some damp potting mix, covered with more potting mix, then left on a 20-watt seed starting heat mat to sprout.
I ought to start seeing green sprouts emerge in a week or two.
I admit, these were an impulse item. I was at the grocery store, getting some potatoes (for chitting) and sweet potatoes (to get going, for slips for planting), and I noticed the ginger root. I’ve heard that it can be grown in my area (hardiness zone 7). So I picked some up. And if I’m doing ginger, I might as well do turmeric, as they are close relatives and have similar growing requirements.
My advice: Before you start these plants, start with a little math. My growing season is maybe 6 months long. (The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists my growing season as 186 days (reference). Most sources say that ginger requires a 10-month growing season. So, one way or the other, absent a greenhouse, these are going to be houseplants for about four months. One way or the other. Before I can plant them out in the garden.
I haven’t quite worked out how I’m going to manage that. But rumor has it that these will sprout in their own good time, so it’ll be a matter of some weeks before I’ll need to start dealing with that. If they sprout at all.
I mean, how hard can it be, right? Plus, all that delicious turmeric ale.
Addendum: Sweet potatoes
Finishing off my root/tuber/rhizome starts are my sweet potatoes.
I have sung the praises of the lowly sweet potato elsewhere (Post G23-065). It’s food that can look after itself. Once you get them started, you prune them to keep them from taking over. And dig up some food at the end of the season.
The only hard part is coaxing a handful of sweet potatoes to sprout, so that you can plant the sprouts. And even that isn’t hard, it just seems to take forever. Plop a few sweet potatoes into a box full of potting soil, keep it warm and moist, and wait. And wait. And wait.
So I start my sweet potatoes now — around Groundhog Day. Which seems ridiculous, given that they really don’t want to go out into the garden before May 1 or so, at the earliest. But it really does seem to take them months, every year, to begin producing slips. So in they go.
Aside from remembering to water them every once in a while, this is zero effort. You just have to remember to do it early enough, every year.
