Nubs of ginger above ground after the leaves have died out.

It’s been about 11 months since I started growing my culinary ginger from rhizomes bought from the supermarket, and I figured the time was coming for the rhizomes to mature. After all, I’d read that it takes 8-10 months for this to happen. However, I was waiting for the plants to die out first, which is supposed to be the signal that they’re ready – which they finally started doing.

The cute thing about culinary ginger is, it grows in a line – so when the stems and leaves finally die out, you’ll see little rows of ginger nubs sticking out of the earth! It’s rather orderly…

I just wanted to see what a single rhizome would look like, so I carefully unearthed one row of the ginger nubs, and got this:

11-month ginger rhizome. Not too shabby...

How thrilling is that? 8) It’s more impressive than the one we dug up four months ago, but I’d like it to be even more impressive! For this, it needs to have stayed in the ground longer – which the other ginger plants will continue to do, until we need some in the kitchen again.

I did, of course, break off the bits with emerging growing buds, to plant or give to other curious friends. Yes, there are more of you coming out of the woodwork now – good for you! If you’re going to grow plants, they might as well be edible ones that you can benefit from.

Some of my earlier experimental ginger plants are growing extremely slowly, so I’ll probably transplant them over the coming long Chinese New Year weekend. From what I’ve observed, yes, ginger needs some shade to grow well, but it needs more sun than shade – so I have to be more selective in where I plant them. I have a nice spot in mind, and hope it will become known as the “ginger corner” of the garden in time to come…

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