Ginger And Turmeric - The Best That I Have Ever Grown

I am so happy. Since moving them into the shadow of my house in April this year, I now have the healthiest and loveliest ginger and turmeric plants - the best that I have ever grown. The leaves are lusciously green with abundant foliage attached to thick stalks and shoots. And as an added bonus for me, the plants on some pots are beginning to bloom too.

I have been planting ginger and turmeric for about 8 years now after been inspired by a local TV documentary that I saw back then. My success have been mixed previously. Direct sunlight and ginger is actually a bad combination (likewise with turmeric as it is a plant that belongs to the ginger family). But I did not know about this until recently. Previously, I have always assumed wrongly that I had problems with the soil whenever I get ailing looking plants. I tried adding additional fertilizer and this obviously did not help. It is only later that I realized, through my own observation and confirmation from Google searches, that ginger and turmeric must be kept away from direct sunlight.

My wife loves home grown ginger and turmeric. And I like growing them. They are some of the easiest thing that I have ever grown as they do not require much care. The only pests that I can see so far are grasshoppers and garden snails, but that is not something that is unmanageable. I used to plant them in the ground, but these days, I only plant them in pots so that I can move them around easily when the need arise. I only water them like once a day at around noon - lazy me. I also mulch the top soil in the pots with garden clippings to minimize weeding.

I will need to find a new place soon for my ginger and turmeric plants as the sunlight is slowly creeping nearer and nearer towards the house as we head towards the end of the year. The sun swings from the Northern to the Southern sky between the June and December solstice, and then back again from the Southern to the Northern sky between January and May. Some sunlight is already touching the outer and top leaves on some pots at noon.

Spicing Up My Garden With Ginger

Mixed Yield

Over the years, my success with growing ginger have been mixed. At times the yield was good. At times, all I got were just skinny ginger roots. And at other times, there was nothing at all - the ginger that I planted just rotted away instead of sprouting.

I have had my suspicion with the pot placement. I grow them in pots instead of the ground, by the way. Pots placed under shadier area seems to produce healthier looking plants with bigger and better ginger roots. For pots placed under direct sunlight, young shoots will just turn yellow and eventually dry up. Or will have leaf stalks that are just about 12 inches in length (when it should be about 2 to 2½ feet) with skinny ginger roots.