Growing ginger leaves will start to yellow getting close to harvest

The leaves start to yellow as ginger gets close to harvest

A Sub-tropical climate is perfect for growing ginger. Brisbane in Australia is ideal. From my experience with ginger it is a very easy crop to grow and doesn’t take much maintenance.

I started by planting some ginger from the supermarket. I made sure that it was Australian ginger as this would help prevent introducing an overseas disease into my backyard.

Growing ginger from thumb sized pieces

Plant firm ginger pieces with good buds or eyes

Good buds or eyes and firm piece

All I did was pick all the small pieces out of the tray that looked like they had a growing tip or bud or eye. In most cases they looked like they were starting to grow. I handled them to make sure they weren’t soft and mushy as I felt that this indicated they wouldn’t rot in the ground.

When I first started I didn’t have any clue about the best time to plant, length of time before harvest or the best time to harvest. Over the last two years I have learnt a few things and can give you a few guidelines for growing ginger.

  • Best time to plant – early spring
  • Best time to harvest – when the leaves have died down Autumn/Winter
  • Best growing environment – fertile soil, compost, moisture but not waterlogged, humid tropical environment. Some say partial shade is required, but I have found that ginger can be grown in full sun. I have dripper line irrigation on a timer so that the soil is kept moist. Perhaps this allows the ginger to grow in full sun.
Growing ginger to harvest

The best part of growing ginger, besides eating is harvesting

I have just harvested some ginger and replanted some of the rhizomes in a new location. This location only gets sun in the morning, so it will be interesting to see if the ginger grows better or worse than in full sun.

There is still quite a bit of ginger to harvest and seeing as the leaves are still mostly green I will leave it a while longer before digging further.

In the top picture some of the leaves are greener than the others. The drier yellowy leaves are from the ginger left in the ground from last year. As mentioned I knew nothing about ginger when I first planted it. I harvested most of the ginger and left the rest in the ground to grow again the following year. It has definitely regrown as you can see from what I have harvested so far.

Leaves still green

Leaves still green from small ginger pieces from the supermarket

Leaves of the small pieces planted are still green

The leaves that are still green are from ginger planted from the bits from the supermarket. On a number of occasions through the year I purchased some small corms and just put them in the soil. The results surprised me as most of them grew. I now have a rather large stock of ginger that I will replant in new locations.

Growing ginger is satisfying and easy to do. If you have a small area, even in the flower garden, bury some corms with the bud side up and be surprised at what you harvest. The leaves look good too and make a great background to more colourful plants.

Replanting a piece of ginger

Growing ginger from a thumb sized piece

From the left: Thumbsize piece of ginger, Choose location, Plant ginger eyes up, Cover ginger lightly, Mark the spot.  Leave it alone for at least 8 months. It’s that easy

 

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