Growing ginger at home
People have known ginger as a healthy and tasty spice for many millennia. Growing ginger at home it has become available relatively recently, and such an unusual indoor culture will perfectly decorate the house, hitting everyone with spike-shaped inflorescences, and will give a small, but truly healing harvest.
Where and how does ginger grow in nature?
For growth, formation of roots similar to branched tubers and flowering, a native of their tropics needs warmth, diffused light for 12-15 hours, a lot of moisture and nutritious soil.
Therefore, growing ginger in the open field in the middle lane is extremely difficult. But lovers of indoor floriculture and owners of summer cottages and greenhouses have a real opportunity to start a productive ginger bed. It is here that the only place where ginger grows in Russia. Planting roots in the ground is risky due to the high probability of spring frosts and not too long summer.
How to grow ginger at home?
Growing ginger at home is preceded by the purchase of planting material. For him, an inquisitive plant breeder will not have to go to a flower shop, but to a supermarket or a grocery store. Here you can easily find fresh ginger rhizomes, suitable not only to become an excellent seasoning for meat or fish, but also to give rise to new plants.
On the thick, branched roots of ginger, if you look closely, you can see dormant buds. It is they who will become sprouts after planting. When purchasing rhizomes for planting, they pay attention to the freshness, juiciness and health of the planting material. Young smooth roots with an elastic dense surface, without dry areas or traces of insect activity, give the best growth.
When the root is at home before planting the ginger, it is placed in warm water for several hours. This simple measure is able not only to awaken dormant buds on a high-quality rhizome, but also to revive a sluggish, dried out specimen.
If you pay attention to how ginger grows, you will notice that several thin, erect sprouts depart from one root at once. The fact is that with successful stimulation, all the kidneys present go into growth. When choosing a rhizome for planting, you need to look for an instance with a large number of such eyes. In this case, by dividing the root into several fragments, you can get a lot of exotic plants at once. Places of cuts on a succulent root are sprinkled with chopped charcoal, which will help protect the planting material from rotting or fungal attack.
How to plant ginger at home?
In the tropics, where, as in the photo, ginger grows in nature, the plant is considered extremely unpretentious and almost maintenance-free. This is not surprising, because the humid southern regions seem to be created for moisture and heat-loving culture.
In the middle lane, it is impossible to achieve the formation of roots and flowering of ginger without careful preparation in planting.You should start with the soil, which should be nutritious, loose, actively drained. To obtain a substrate, mix the garden soil in equal shares, humus and sand. You can also add a little complex fertilizer for root crops here. Such prolonged feeding will help the plant to form a powerful root system.
Growing ginger at home follows a one-year cycle. In spring, the rhizomes sprout, then a rosette of large leaves develops, but by autumn it withers, and the root leaves for the winter dormant period.
Therefore, before growing ginger at home, you need to decide on the goal. If the plant is planted to obtain useful roots, take wide, rather small containers, where there will be room for the newly formed rhizomes.
When the goal of the houseplant enthusiast is to bloom ginger, it is helpful to limit the space for the root system to grow. This stimulates the tropical culture to form inflorescences. Unfortunately, at home, store-bought ginger blooms reluctantly and only a couple of years after planting.
In both cases, the pots must have drainage holes, and 2-3 cm of expanded clay are poured onto the bottom to ensure the outflow of excess moisture.
Asking the question: "How to plant ginger?", The grower should know when it is best to do it. While maintaining the correct conditions of detention, and especially lighting, ginger at home can be planted at any time of the year. But having done this at the end of winter, by spring they get the strongest shoots.
The ginger roots are laid out on the surface of a moist substrate so that the buds are directed upwards. Then the pieces of rhizomes are gently pressed into the soil, leaving points of growth of shoots above it. You do not need to sprinkle with ginger, but additional watering with warm water will be useful.
If there is dry air in the room, cover the pot with a bag. In dim light, in the warmth, after two weeks, deep green pointed sprouts of ginger will appear above the surface of the soil.
A video on how to plant ginger at home will become a faithful assistant for a beginner and experienced florist who has decided to replenish the collection with an exotic and at the same time very useful culture.
Home Ginger Care
Talking about how to grow ginger at home, one cannot ignore the issue of caring for the plant. With the emergence of seedlings, ginger not only needs to maintain heat and high humidity, but also in regular feeding, as well as watering.
The plant tolerates heat well, but reacts extremely sharply to direct sunlight and cold wind. This is important to consider when choosing a place for a pot with planted ginger rhizomes. On warm days, it is useful to move the container to the garden, balcony or verandas, providing shading and protection from the drafts of the green pet. If there is no threat of night freezing, with sufficient watering and care, ginger can remain here around the clock:
- The warmer the air, the more often and more abundantly the soil is moistened.
- A drop in temperature signals that watering needs to be reduced.
On hot days, when growing ginger at home, the plant is good for irrigating the foliage with warm soft water. Top dressing is carried out every two weeks, using alternately organic fertilizers and mineral supplements. Introduction:
- nitrogen stimulates the growth of foliage;
- potassium will help the plant form buds;
- phosphorus has a beneficial effect on the growth of rhizomes.
At the end of summer, about a month before the foliage withers, watering is reduced, and feeding is stopped altogether. This measure will push the ginger to build up root mass.
However, it is not enough to grow ginger at home, how can you save it for a long time?
After the green part dies off, the plant whose roots are intended for human consumption can be removed from the substrate. The rhizomes are washed, the remnants of the shoots are removed.After drying in a dry visit, ginger can be stored. In the refrigerator or in a dry basement, the roots remain fresh for up to 3-4 months.
If a florist wants to see ginger inflorescences, it is not necessary to remove the rhizomes from the substrate. In dry form, with a slight decrease in temperature, they rest until spring, that is, until the moment when the growth buds wake up. In the spring, it is useful to feed ginger with potash fertilizer and return the summer irrigation schedule.
Growing ginger in the country
Although ginger plants are thermophilic natives of the tropics, for some Russian summer residents there is no longer a need to go to the store for sharp aromatic roots. If there is a greenhouse or greenhouse on the garden plot, you can master the cultivation of ginger in the country.
Since the climate of the middle zone and the too short summer do not allow harvesting in the open field, before planting ginger in the garden, it must be germinated at home. They do this at the end of winter or at the very beginning of March.
Rhizomes, divided into areas with eyes, are planted in a nutrient substrate. As soon as the ginger starts growing, it is transferred to greenhouse conditions. This must be done very carefully, trying not to disturb the root system that is beginning to develop.
Before planting ginger, a loose substrate rich in humus is prepared for it, it is abundantly moistened and allowed to warm up. This will ensure quick and easy acclimatization and encourage the plant to grow vigorously. The organization of regular watering and feeding will provide an active increase in the mass of the roots. They are collected at the end of September, when signs of wilting of foliage become noticeable.