How to Grow Ginger At Home

How to Grow Ginger At Home

Photo Credit: Bluemenbiene

We cook a lot of Asian food in our home and many recipes call for ginger. I absolutely hated the taste of ginger you brought from the store and usually just omitted it from a lot of recipes. I ended up engaged in conversation with a lady at the Chinese restaurant and told her how I love to make Asian foods, but couldn’t stand the taste of ginger, but it tasted so much different when going out to eat or sharing a meal with our Asian friends. She flat out laughed and said; get fresh ginger the taste is completely different. Now I do realize there is a drastic difference from store bought herbs, roots, seasonings, etc, but I honestly was not prepared for this drastic of a difference.

After the prices of seeing organic ginger in the store, I figured there had to be another way. So this post is born of growing ginger in my own home.

Ginger is a rhizome, they have “eye buds”, when selecting your ginger there are two things you want to look for the most important being organic, this way you don’t have to worry about chemicals (growth inhibitors) stunting the growth, which means you won’t have much luck. The second is trying to find one with some eye buds already growing; this will speed up the process a lot. Yes, you will spend a bit more buying organic, but in the end you will save a ton of money growing your own.

I use a large pot to plant mine and fill it with rich soil. You only have to plant your ginger about two inches beneath the soil, making sure your eye buds are facing upwards, the eye buds should not be planted down in the soil.

I plant one ginger root in a 6” inch container, but this year I will be starting 4 roots in a 24” beautiful container that I found that will compliment my kitchen.  Make sure you use a durable container that can handle some digging, after all you will be digging for roots, so stay away from plaster, ceramic and terra cotta pots.

Keep your ginger, out of direct sun, they prefer partial shade, they also like to be kept moist. Now the biggest thing is to wait it out, the longer you let it grow the bigger the roots will be when you harvest them.  Once they reach a height of 2 feet you can easily harvest or let them stay a bit longer. Also remember to save some of your root, so you can replant and keep your ginger supply going.

Also keep in mind, your not going to be growing pretty ginger, don’t expect flowers and a plant you can show your family and friends, it will just be a basic stalk, sort of like a corn stalk in its early growth.