Grow Ginger As a Houseplant

Intro: Grow Ginger As a Houseplant

If you are going to grow houseplants, why not choose plants that are both beautiful and useful? Ginger is one of these plants.  Looking a bit like bamboo, and with striking flowers (if you can get it to bloom) Ginger makes a beautiful addition to your house, and you can always have fresh ginger root on hand. 


I always liked the idea of growing strange and exotic plants.  There is something about seeing the plant where these wonderful flavors come from.  Who among us has seen a live cinnamon tree, or gathered nutmeg from the source?  Yet ginger is a wonderful flavor and can be grown in our homes.  So why not give it a shot.  Ginger is naturally and understory plant, so it is used to not having direct sunlight.  This makes it an ideal houseplant. 


You will need

-Whole Ginger Root (if you are worried about chemicals, try finding some at a health or natural foods store)
- A container for your plant (Ginger rambles so fairly shallow and wide is a good idea)
-Well draining potting soil or a mix of potting soil and sand
-East or South facing windows

That is really it.  With these few things you can make your own homegrown ginger, and have a beautiful potted plant while you are at it. 

STEP 1: Rinse and Soak Your Ginger

Most Ginger in the store will have some kind of growth inhibitor on it.  Not all of these are unnatural, but they do allow ginger to be shipped and sored without growing.  So the first thing that you need to do with to get rid of this growth inhibitor.  You do this by soaking your ginger root in lukewarm water.  I soaked mine for about 2 hours.  Some of the skin came off, but overall the ginger looked the same as it did before.   

(this is just a small piece of my overall root used for illustration)

STEP 2: Prepare Your Container

If you want to go the cheapskate way (like I did) you will find a useable container around the house.  Mine is simply the lid to a container of bread that I bought.  It does not have drainage holes, so I put a few holes in the bottom.  And then filled it will my prewetted potting soil. 

I always prewet my soil by putting a cup or two of water in the bag, shaking it, and letting it sit for an hour.  This keeps you from having a problem with the water beading up on top or running straight through without wetting anything.  My potting soil has lots of perlite, so it is fairly light, but if you want you can mix sand in with yours to make it easier to use, and help the ginger grow better. 

STEP 3: Plant Your Ginger

Ginger naturally grows near the surface so I planted it barely under the surface of my potting soil.  I made sure to keep it in contact with good wet soil, but the top is a little bit dry.   You can see that i broke my main root into several pieces.  I had a fairly large root to begin with and I wanted to try and grow more than one plant.  We will see whether that was a wise choice.   

STEP 4: Wait and Enjoy

Now you simply have to give it time and a little attention, and you will have your very own ginger plant to use and to enjoy. 

Mine is still in the sprouting stage, but if you would like to  see someone's success and full grown plants, check out the blog that inspired this instructable.

http://www.5acresandadream.com/2012/01/homegrown-ginger.html

Her Ginger looks great and as a true inspiration for growing my own, and teaching you how to grow yours. 

I will be adding more photos and steps as my Ginger matures and is harvested. 

STEP 5: Results

After months of waiting and watering, the ginger has started to grow and has taken off like a rocket.  Keep the soil very moist, and warm, and your ginger should start growing too.

You can see the pink in the growing stems, and one of them is so tall so fast that it is out of frame.  I will have to move these to a bigger pot soon to give them room to grow.

Comments

[JamesM903]

Hey just wondering about trimming them back and repotting them. I am growing a ginger, the original stalk has darkened and is leaning over and the edges of the leaves are getting a little crispy looking. It has two additional stalks, but they are brighter and smaller, but still have the crispy edges. I water it through regularly, it receives some but not too much direct sunglight, I also make sure it drains well so not to promote root rot, but it's still looking a little sad.

[Gimvaainl]

If mine did this I would hold back on watering and monitor it. Then, only after I know it is dry throughout and thirsty, I would water it. Do this a couple of waterings and see if it perks up at all. If not, try repotting into a new soil in case there is too much of something else.
My potted "house ginger" (growing for the fun more than the harvest) gets these brown tips. Our house is cold in Winter and the water retains in the soil much longer. It is difficult thus to make sure the soil is not too wet or dry so I just started waiting for the stems to show some signs of thirst (color lightening, slight droop/limping). I will repot with a more quick-to-drain soil next time around.
And mine also completely dies back at the end of Winter but grows back just fine.
Also, I had two in plastic pots and one in a ceramic pot - I believe the ceramic was 2qt and a bit larger than the plastic ones. The ceramic potted ginger grew much better and dried much more quickly. I also keep mine right in a south-facing window.

[anne14534]

I may have planted mine too deep. After weeks of waiting for it to sprout I just dug it up to find the root had disintegrated, leaving only skin. Time to buy some more organic ginger and try again!

[JudyC4]

My ginger plant is looking great, can the root be used without the plant flowering?

[pattiemelt]

I've been thinking about growing ginger for a while but never got around to it. I bought a couple of fingers of ginger a while back for cooking & forgot about it - now it has 2 sprouts on it so I guess that's my cue to try growing it. Thanks for the 'ible!

[MelissaT2]

We are starting ours today. Excited for our preteen to grow something that can then be eaten.

[funkyvailchick]

Turmeric will grow much the same as ginger.

[The Freak]

It's best to pick a root with a bud like shape already formed, speeds it up a little. Mine sprouted in about a month, mayble less.

[handsonlife]

Glad to see that it worked for you too. Mine eventually ended up nearly 3 feet high, and needed support to stay upright. Perhaps I had too much nitrogen in the potting mix. Either way, it makes a pretty and useful houseplant.

[kim7633]

When you start to see the shoots (green parts) you should add more soil. This should be done until there is at least 3" if not 5" of soil above the top of the rhizome. It encourages roots early and larger growth later (or so I am told).