Finding nice looking Ginger, Galangal or Turmeric rhizomes at the supermarket often gets folks thinking of growing their own, only to find their rhizomes rotting after planting. With supermarket Ginger at around $56 a kilo last year, it really is worth trying to grow your own.
I’ll share here the process that we’ve found successful at Ligaya Garden. It should give you a good crop and help you to avoid pieces of your favourite spice turning to goo after planting. We get some pretty extreme weather in Gawler, but these tips work here and should work from Melbourne across to Perth. It’s a bit different in the tropics but isn’t everything? The steps in this article apply to all three rhizomes, Ginger Turmeric and Galangal.
The most important things to remember when growing these plants are that they like warmth and bright light, but prefer filtered sun or morning sun with afternoon shade. Full sun can scorch Ginger, especially in hot, dry climates.
They don’t like swimming. They love a lot of water but don’t like it sitting around. Good drainage is the key to successfully growing them.
We’ve found Galangal to be pretty well indestructible but Ginger prefers 20-35 degrees for best growing and Turmeric, a little cooler at 20 – 30. It doesn’t really make a lot of difference, as long as they’re not baking in 40°C + temperatures for days in end. Ours have gotten through a few days like that without missing a beat.
When to propagate your plants
You can start growing your plants any time but they do much better if the weather is warmer. Spring is best and propagating then will give you a good start. If you’re in a hurry, you may even get a small harvest when the leaves die down in Winter. The old planting adage applies here – if you can comfortably sit on the soil with a bare bum, its time to plant!
Choosing the right piece
Successful growing starts with the choice of pieces to grow from. It may take a couple of visits to the markets to get just the right pieces but that effort is well worth it.
Find a piece that has a couple of eyes (buds) on the same side. If distinct shoots are already forming, that’s wonderful and if they’re green or turning green, that’s perfect. One good eye is better than a few tiny ones.
The next trick is to not have too much rhizome. If each shoot has a piece of rhizome about the size of two 50 cent pieces, that’s perfect. One of the most common reasons for failure is putting too much rhizome in the ground. I’ve found that pieces with a large chunk or rhizome often take longer to produce new growth. Maybe this is because they’re more patient because they have lots in reserve, while smaller pieces sense the urgency to start sucking in nutrients and so grow shoots and roots faster. That’s just my take on it.
Treating the pieces before planting
If you need to break or cut the rhizome, try to leave a little rhizome around the shoot and let the wound dry. It will callus over with a protective layer that will help your rhizome piece survive in the soil. Leave the rhizome somewhere for a couple of days or at least overnight to do this. The rhizomes have a protective surface and water only enters through roots so damage to the rhizome will allow water inside and could rot it. That’s probably the most common cause of failure.
Now that the wounds are calloused over and sealed, it’s time to soak the pieces in a dilute liquid fertilizer such as Seasol. A few hours is enough but it doesn’t hurt if you leave it overnight. I often do that because I forget about them!
It’s time now to plant the pieces into their temporary home, where they will grow roots and leaves and start supplying themselves with energy and nutrients, no longer needing to rely on the stored energy in the initial rhizome pieces.
Planting your rhizomes
Put the pieces into well draining soil or potting mix in a small pot, the next size up from the size of the rhizome pieces that you have. Choose a loose, well draining potting mix, even add some sand if you’re not sure. These two actions ensure that water won’t sit around the rhizome for too long. You can put multiple pieces into a larger pot but ensure there’s a good amount of space between them.
We find that small, self watering, hanging baskets available readily from the big green shed around the corner do well for growing Ginger. They are deep enough that the soil isn’t constantly wet and wide enough to let the plants stretch as they grow. In the cold weather, I pop the saucer off of the base to make sure they don’t get waterlogged.
Depth is important at this stage, place the pieces so that the shoots are just at the surface where they can receive a little light. We’re trying to stimulate them to grow leaves so that the plant can get energy. The shoots will grow leaves and new rhizomes will begin to form at the base of the shoot and new roots will grow from these. The new rhizome is much white and much thicker than the roots. This new growth phase can take from two weeks to a month depending on several factors, some of which I’m unsure of at this time.
Give the pot a good water and set it aside for a few days. You’ll only have to water twice a week for the next few weeks. When you have some healthy leaves, take a peek at what’s going on underground. If you see something like the pics above or below, you’re doing OK. If not, leave it a little longer.
Transplanting to your garden
When leaves and roots have formed, it’s time to transplant the new plants to their final home in a large tub or the ground There is a difference in how the three types of rhizome like to be planted. Ginger prefers to be planted 5 cm deep, though in cooler climates shallow planting can help warm the rhizome closer to the surface. Galangal likes to be buried deeper, 5 centimetres down. Turmeric prefers a depth of around 2-3 centimetres. It sounds like a bit of fuss (something that I’m not known for) but it works.
Coming from tropical areas, all three plants like a slightly acidic soil, ranging from pH 5.5 – 6.8 but will tolerate a marginally wider range, up to 7. As soils in SA tend toward being slightly alkaline, adding leaf mould, eucalyptus mulch or pine based mulch will nudge the soil in the right direction.
Remove as much soil along with the rhizome as you can when transplanting to help prevent transplant shock. Water well with a little seaweed concentrate. A drop or two of the Star of Bethlehem or Rescue Remedy from the Bach Flower Remedies range goes into the water of every plant we transplant in Ligaya Garden. This helps undo the trauma of being dug up and moved. If it is a particularly delicate kind of plant, a drop of Walnut from the same range helps it to handle the change.
The plants need excellent drainage and a lot of light. I like to add about 5% of sand to where they are to be planted out.
The leaves will droop and look sad until the roots are re-established. When you see them back upright, all is well.
Mature plants will survive our near 50 degree South Australian Summers and the frosts of Winter but it is advisable to add some cover on these days. They’ll take some damage and look a bit ratty around the leaves but as long as they have moisture and cool roots, they’ll be fine. Currently, it is the hot, dry, Northerly wind that seems to do the most damage, so some kind of wind break helps until the plants are fully mature.
Water well, twice every second day and use liquid fertilizer once a week for a while until the leaf growth looks good.
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Wait a bit
It takes a while for the rhizomes to get going and this is where folks sometimes think that they’ve failed when they’re really just jumping the gun. I advise no harvesting for the first year. In the second year just bandicoot around the edges of the patch. Once the main rhizome is well established, you’ll have so much of your favourite spice that you’ll be giving newbies tips on how to grow them
We grow different varieties of Ginger, Galangal and Turmeric at Ligaya Garden. There’s Redback Ginger for its striking leaves, Cardamom Ginger, shop bought Ginger, Alpine Ginger, Galangal and Turmeric. We’ve grown them all successfully using the methods I’ve written about here and if you follow these tips, I’m sure you will too.
The plants
Each species looks pretty well the same during the early stages, but their leaves and flowers give away their identities once you know what to look for. Ginger grows tall, narrow leaves along a pseudostem made of tightly wrapped leaf bases, and its flowers arrive later on a separate spike or cone, usually cream‑coloured and sitting at the end of a stem. So far, we’ve not had Ginger flower here at Ligaya Garden, despite having had enormous success growing it.
Turmeric begins the same way, but its leaves broaden as the plant matures and Turmeric sends up its flower spike from the base of the plant, and it rises through the pseudostem so it looks like the bloom is growing inside the stem itself. The inflorescence is built from pale bracts with yellow fertile flowers tucked below. The fertile yellow flowers look like little snake mouths – complete with fangs!
Greater galangal grows taller ,with broad upright leaves and flowers that appear at the tips of the leaf stems. Lesser galangal is the odd one out: a low, ground‑hugging plant whose flowers emerge directly from the rhizome at soil level, much like Turmeric but on a far smaller scale. Once you’ve encountered these differences in the garden, you can tell each plant at a glance.
The leaves and stem can reach 1 metre tall pretty quickly. Flowers come later. Turmeric flowers are a spike that comes directly from the rhizome and consist of an upper layer of sterile bracts of a white/cream colour with fertile flowers below which may be tinged yellow or pink.
Harvest time!
Whatever you do, don’t harvest your rhizomes until the second year. Let the plants get established and fatten up a bit. Traditionally, you’d do it when the leaves have died back but with the climate the way it is now, we have some leaves all year on all 3 species, though the Turmeric seems to get hit harder than the others.
If you harvest your Turmeric at the beginning of Winter, it will have white storage organs that look like tubers attached to the roots. Those are how the plant stores nutrients for its off-season. They’re quite tasty but be quick, they’ll disappear once the plant wakes up for Spring!
There are two ways to harvest. You can dig up a whole patch of rhizome from a single plant. That means a mess and replanting. The best way is called ‘Bandicooting’ here in Oz, named after a little mammal who likes to use the technique. Bandicooting means digging down a little until you find the rhizome, then breaking off as much as you need. You won’t have to dig far. All three species tend to grow at just on or below the surface. This method is a lot more fun and doesn’t necessitate replanting the whole plant. Also, the rhizome is stored in the soil for any time you want a fresh bit. I don’t usually bury the exposed, wounded rhizome immediately, preferring to leave it exposed to callous over before covering it with soil. This can help prevent rotting.
