This is almost two kilos of ginger. At supermarket prices, that’s nearly $60 worth, and mine is organically grown, fresh and crisp and took really no attention or effort at all. I’m a bit pleased about it!
All of that ginger came out of the large pot in the foreground, on the edge of my little front verandah. I’ve left the hanging baskets in the photo to give you a sense of scale. The pot next to it has the lemon grass just repotted too, and behind that is a repurposed cast iron double sink where I’ve just harvested and replanted the water chestnuts, with kang kong growing in the other sink.
The verandah edge gets northern and eastern sun, and the pot is black, which I think helps. Ginger is really a tropical plant, and here in mid-northern NSW we are at the edge of its natural range. It gets plenty of water both from rain and from the baskets overhead dripping into it. The row of pots sit on a strip of fence mesh between two bessa blocks, so it gets very good drainage.
I don’t usually harvest all my ginger at once. There are two other patches of it in garden beds, that never get dug up. Just like my turmeric, I just bandicoot a bit when I need it – that way it is always very fresh. Over winter it loses all its leaves but there’s enough on the surface to find it.
But the ginger in the pot does better for being repotted each winter with fresh chook made compost mixed with a couple of double handfuls of biochar. So I upended it into a garden bed, replanted a couple of rhizomes, and harvested the rest.
I made half of it into pickled ginger, to give as gifts at the Winter Solstice celebration this weekend, and to have in the fridge for rice paper rolls and sushi and dipping sauces. Come spring and I will be very happy about that! While I was at it, I decided to divide up and repot the lemon grass too, so the other half went with some green chilis, lemon grass, Makrut lime leaves, coriander, Thai basil and spring onions all out of the garden, and some sugar, cumin and fish sauce from the pantry, into a green curry sauce for the freezer.
I have plenty of room in my veggie garden here I. Homeleigh fir my ginger crop, but I use it every day in my lemon verbena tea so you have inspired me to plant more in some grow bags that are sitting empty. I love your posts Linda.
A couple of years ago I tried growing ginger in a wicking pot. It grew, but not much.
I think our climate is a bit too tough down in Melbourne.