In this video, we are going to
unlock the secrets of growing ginger, one of my favorite plants, both
in the garden and in the kitchen. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening
where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And today we're
talking about the almighty ginger, one of the most widely cultivated
crops and used crops in the world. It's one of the first crops that was
exported from Asia. Here we have the root. We'll get to why it's not actually a
root in a second, but here is a plant, the ginger plant. This is
actually not the classic species. This is Alpinia galanga,
which is a Thai ginger. But for all intents and purposes,
it grows the same way. Now, ginger used in spices, you
can candy it, you can dry it. There's 1,000,001 things to do. So in this video we're going to
learn how to grow it in a container, the exact way to get
EPIC amounts of ginger. And at the very end for a little bonus, I'm going to show you how I turn my
homegrown ginger into a ginger powder. So if you want some Epic ginger harvest, make sure to cultivate that light
button. And let's get into the video. One of the most important things to know
when you are growing ginger is we call it the ginger root, but we're
actually harvesting the rhizome, which is a modified underground
stem. So it's technically a stem, it's the main stem of the ginger plant. And what we're doing is we are planting
a rhizome when we're growing it in a container. So here's one that I
have. I got it at a grocery store. And here's a pro tip. When you're
buying it at a grocery store. So when you're going to the store to
find ginger, you want to look for eyes, right? So look for these little eyes.
You can sometimes see them sprouting, sometimes not, and just grab a
couple of big chunks like this. See you can see this is where the new
growth is going to come out right there, right there, and right there. Now another thing you should know when
you're planting your ginger is that the larger the rhizome chunk that you plant,
the faster you're going to get ginger. And the reason why is because
you're going to get more sprouts. So if we have a plant like this, you
can see we have one, two, three, four, five, six shoots coming up, and that's only going to happen if there
are enough areas for the shoots to come up. So if we took this little toe off
right here, there might be two points. You get two shoots. If we plant
this entire ginger piece though, we're going to get a lot more, which means more shoot development up
top and more root growth down below quicker, which means more
photosynthesis, which means more energy, which means more growth, which
means you get the ginger faster. Now that we know how ginger grows, we have to think about the container
we're going to put it in, right? That's what the video is about. Now what you'll notice is as you plant
it and the stalks start to come up, they creep in one direction,
so they grow horizontally, the rhizome expands horizontally. So that means it makes a little
bit more sense in my opinion, to grow it in a wide shallow pot
rather than a narrow deep pot. So this pot, for example, I may
transplant into a wider shallow pot. That's why I've chosen this
one right here for soil. We're going to use a really
high quality potting mix. It wants something that is somewhat loose
so that rhizome can creep and expand, but also really rich in organic matter. Now while you can pre sprout your ginger
in a little bowl of water and just place it in a bowl of water, wait till
you see some root and shoot development. If you so choose, you can just go ahead and
plant it straight in and
then hit it with a little bit of water. It's gonna start anyways. That's just kind of way to speed up the
process, but certainly not necessary. Anything that would be happening in
that bowl will also be happening in this soil. So we have our mix here, a really nice high quality
potting mix with ginger. It's kind of not like a standard
root crop, like a potato, potatoes you would put down
pretty deep in the soil, maybe at least six
inches or so I would say. Although I plant my potatoes even deeper, but what I'll do is I'll
just barely cover it up. So we've got our nice piece here, nice healthy chunk of ginger rhizome
and we're going to pop it in, give it a nice little firm press, we'll cover it up maybe half inch,
three quarter inch, nothing too wild. And now we are ready to water it in. Don't go crazy with watering it in
here because remember there's no roots, no shoots, so we just need to give it enough water
so that it knows it's time to start throwing out those roots and
shoots. And besides that, we're pretty much good to go and
remember it's in a container, so you can definitely
over-water it a little bit. One thing I like to do is just check, let's see how much we
watered that right now. It looks like we got it moist
to about, oh, I don't know, maybe about two inches or so. I
might give it a tiny bit more, and that's pretty much it
until it starts to sprout up. So after you planted it, where do
we place it? To understand that, we have to understand again,
where did it come from? It came from Southeast Asia.
That's a tropical climate. Tropical climate means lots of rainfall,
lots of humidity, lots of heat, and the soil is moist for quite some time. So if we're thinking about
that and we're thinking, how do we place our containers so that
we get some nice sprouting and some good growth, good early growth, that means probably you're gonna
want to start it in the spring. Probably you're gonna
want to start it indoors. If you're in a specifically
cold area, you know, if you get a true frost in
the winter, start it indoors, wait till you see some
sprouts start to come up, and then you can think about moving it
outdoors. Because again, heat, humidity, and water-loving plant, when these
are cultivated in en masse, right? In a commercial farming application,
these are all planted in spring. The rhizomes are all planted in spring, timed to right up to that monsoon or
rainy season where they're cultivated. And that's because then you're just
letting mother nature do the work. Of course, we're growing it in a
container. So after it sprouts, you're gonna have to do a
little bit as far as its care. Let's talk about three different problems
that you can run into when you're growing ginger in containers. Honestly, it really is a simple plant provided
you're matching it to the conditions, it expects the conditions it's
used to, right where it evolved. So if you're getting browning
tips, yellowing tips. Browning tips is probably a good sign
that the soil is not moist enough. You may want to throw some mulch on, you may want to water
little bit more often. Perhaps you want to use a container
with worse drainage, right? As long as you're not over-watering. And if you're getting it to yellow a
little bit, it's a nutrient loving plant. So you may want to give it some
granular fertilizer, organic, granular fertilizer, or if you
so choose a liquid fertilizer, just kind of watch out and pay attention. It's the number one skill in the garden, pay attention and you will become
a better gardener magically. If it's getting soggy and
these are rotting out, that's of course too much water. And
really besides that, what if it flowers? Well ginger flowers, that's what the plant does and you
can actually eat the flowers too. So I wouldn't stress out, I
wouldn't worry about the flowers. And that's pretty much the number one, two and three problems
you're going to run into. I would say if you have a specific
problem, drop in the comments down below. So let's pretend the ginger I just planted
has now sprouted and we're looking at this, this is probably two months in at least
we've got some nice growth up top and honestly you can both use the leaves
and the leaves smell amazing as a fragrance. Ginger's just a smell I
really enjoy. But what should you do? Some things that you can do if you're
in a particularly dry area is throw some mulch on top of the container, maybe an
inch or two of a woodchip style mulch. Something like that can really hold that
moisture in. You may want to reapply. I know in commercial applications they'll
do it at time of planting and then they'll kind of hill it up slightly to
keep that moisture in a little bit more really protect the rhizomes and then
they'll also throw some mulch on me 45-90 days after. For harvesting, what you'll want to do is if
you want to keep it growing, if you're in an area where
you can overwinter your
ginger and just keep growing, growing, growing, then what you may want to
do is come through and just
snap off the new chunks of the rhizome and let it continue to grow. That way you're not disturbing the entire
root system and shoot system. Right, but if you're in an area where it does
get to that point where the frost is really starting to come in and the
temperature is really starting to go, it's going to die back so you
can harvest it before then. I would say four to five months is about
the time you want to wait before you do your first harvest. But
if it's going to die back, you may as well harvest all of it. And
then you can wash it, clean it off. And after that, what you can do is you can use the stuff
that you want to use and we're getting into that ginger powder in
just a second here. But uh, you can store the rest of it in like a
root cellar type of situation where then you can plant it again next spring. So your ginger will always
be producing new ginger, both for your garden and for your kitchen.
Now that you know how to grow ginger, let's figure out how to turn
it into a ginger powder. Our little bonus piece on
using it in the kitchen. Something that I'm really big on
this year, taking from the garden, using the kitchen. Ginger
powder, very versatile. So what we're going to do is slice it
and dehydrate it. Let's get started. If you've harvested this from the
ginger, you grew in containers, make sure you give it a good wash and
scrub. But this one's nice and clean. So let's chop it and we're slicing it
into uniform slices because when we dehydrate it, we want it to dehydrate at the same
rate and so the thickness of the slice should be uniform. Let's do
this. I'm going to go very, very cleanly through and this is just
such a great way to use it because you're basically turning ginger
into a raw ingredient, kind of like a salt or a pepper. You're turning it into a dehydrated
powder that you can mix into teas. You can use it as a seasoning
or spice in baked goods. There's 1,000,001 different ways to use
it to say nothing of the medicinal ways that you can use ginger. So
we're almost done slicing here, and you can dehydrate this
in the sun if you wish, but I have a pretty budget dehydrator
that I'm going to show you how to use. Here's the dehydrator
we're using. It's a Nesco. It's a very commonly found one and it
basically works by these stackable trays. So these stackable trays have little sheetings that you can put
on top, and that's what we'll do. We're just going to lay our ginger out. I already have some loquats
dehydrating in here. So let's lay it out and we're going to
go three to four hours at around 115 degrees until the ginger snaps. That's, that's completely dry cause it
can't be turned into a powder. If there's really any
water content left at all four hours later, we
have our dehydrated ginger. Just look how small it ends up shrinking
down to and you want it to be crispy. So listen, that's what we're talking
about. Let's take a spice grinder. You can use something else. You
don't have to use a spice grinder. But I happen to have
one. So we'll pop it on. It just has these two blades there
and there that make quick work of it. [inaudible] So we've gone from grabbing
ginger, even at the grocery store, turning it into a beautiful ginger
plant, cultivated in a container, and then all the way down to turning it
back into ginger powder that I'm gonna use for my teas and my seasonings. And of course I'm gonna need
a whole lot more of this, so I better grow some more ginger. Guys,
It's a super fun plant, so super easy. I really encourage you to grow this one, and even if you're in a climate that
won't support it, really exploding. So grow it as a nice ornamental. It's
fantastic plant. So till next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
