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Indoors heating, especially central heating, can really dry out the air. So it will usually be necessary, in addition to watering your ginger, to spray the plants leaves regularly to increase humidity levels around your plant or plants. Be sure to water well but do not overwater and make sure the containers and growing medium you use are free-draining.
If possible, it would be ideal to grow your ginger in a higher humidity environment. For example, in your kitchen close to a kitchen sink, or in a light, bright bathroom.
As your ginger plant grows, pot it up regularly. By mid-summer, if your plant is thriving, it should be in a rather large container – perhaps even something like a 5 gallon bucket.
Caring For Ginger in a Warmer Climate
Outdoors, in a tropical or subtropical setting, ginger should be low maintenance in the right environment. You can largely simply leave it to its own devices and let nature take its course.
Growing ginger in a tree circle is ideal, because all the elements of the polyculture will work together to create a resilient ecosystem. In such a scheme, organic matter and water are added to a pit at the centre of the ring, so the system is fed with a consistent supply of nutrients and moisture.
Harvesting Ginger
Ginger, when provided with the right ingredients for good growth, should be fully mature and ready to harvest in approximately ten months.
If you wish, you can start to harvest ginger from around four months after planting. You can carefully cut away a small portion of your plant and root, leaving the rest to grow. However, it is important to note that this green ginger does not have the same taste as ginger that is fully mature.
By autumn, in temperate climate areas, you should also have the option of harvesting small quantities of stem ginger. One of the advantages of growing your own ginger is that you will be able to get your hands on stem ginger. That is often more difficult to find in such climate zones than the root ginger you will be more familiar with.
Stem bases can swell to around golf ball size. These can be cut off and candied to make sweets. They can also be used in a number of other ways.
The main harvest time, however, will come when the plant is fully mature. After eight to ten months, the foliage will begin to die down. After leaf drop is the perfect time to harvest. Unearth the roots and you should discover that a new ‘hand’ of root ginger has grown.
Be sure to set aside some good budging sections for next year. Whatever else is left, you can make use of in a range of different ways in your kitchen and around your home.
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