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People have known ginger as a healthy and tasty spice for many millennia. Growing ginger at home has become available relatively recently, and such an unusual indoor culture will perfectly decorate the house, hitting all with spike-shaped inflorescences, and will give a small, but truly healing crop.
Where and how does ginger grow in nature?
Ginger comes to the European stalls of grocery stores and the collection of flower growers from the humid tropical regions of southern Asia. Anyone who is familiar with the plant only by succulent thick roots, it is not known that in nature ginger is a perennial herbaceous crop with a height of 50 to 100 cm, with leathery lanceolate leaves and high spike-like inflorescences of red-pink shade.
For the growth, formation of roots resembling tubers and flowering, the natives of their tropics need heat, diffused light for 12–15 hours, a lot of moisture and nutritious soil.
Therefore, the cultivation of ginger in the open field in the middle lane is extremely difficult. But there is a real opportunity to start a productive ginger bed for room gardeners and owners of country greenhouses and greenhouses. 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. Behind him, the curious plant grower will not have to go to the flower shop, but to the supermarket or the vegetable shop. Here you can easily find fresh rhizomes of ginger, suitable not only to become an excellent seasoning for meat or fish, but also to give rise to new plants.
On thick, branched ginger roots, if you look closely, you can see dormant buds. They will become sprouts after planting. When purchasing rhizomes for planting, they pay attention to the freshness, juiciness and health of planting material. Young growth roots are best of all given by their growth with elastic dense surface, without dry areas or traces of insects.
When the root is at home, before it is planted ginger, it is placed in warm water for several hours. This simple measure capable not only to awaken dormant buds on a high-quality rhizome, but also to reanimate a sluggish, dried-up specimen.
If you pay attention to how ginger grows, you will notice that several thin upright sprouts move away from one root. The fact is that with successful stimulation, all the kidneys present go to growth. When choosing a rhizome for planting, you need to look for a specimen with a large number of such eyes. In this case, dividing the root into several fragments, you can get a lot of exotic plants at once. The slices on the juicy root are sprinkled with crushed charcoal, which will help protect planting stock from rotting or fungal damage.
How to plant ginger at home?
In the tropics, where, as in the photo, ginger grows in nature, the plant is considered to be extremely unpretentious and almost maintenance-free. This is not surprising, because the wet southern areas seem to be created for moisture and heat-loving culture.
In the middle lane to achieve the formation of roots and flowering of ginger is impossible without careful preparation in planting. It should start with the soil, which should be nutritious, loose, actively drained. To obtain the substrate in equal parts mixed garden soil, humus and sand. Here you can add a little complex fertilizer for root vegetables. Such a prolonged dressing will help the plant to form a powerful root system.
Growing ginger at home takes place on a one-year cycle. In the spring of rhizomes give sprouts, then the rosette of large leaves develops, but by the fall it fades, and the root leaves for the winter dormancy period.
Therefore, before growing ginger at home, you need to decide on the goal. If the plant is planted to produce useful roots, take wide, fairly small containers, where there will be a place for newly formed rhizomes.
When the aim of the indoor plant amateur is ginger blossom, it is useful to limit the space for root growth. This stimulates the tropical culture to the formation of inflorescences. Unfortunately, at home, the store-bought ginger reluctantly blooms 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 at the bottom to ensure the outflow of excess moisture.
Asking the question: “How to plant ginger?”, The florist should know when it is best to do it. With the maintenance of the right conditions, 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 receive the strongest shoots.
Ginger roots are laid on the surface of the wet substrate so that the buds are directed upwards. Then the rhizome pieces are gently pressed into the ground, leaving the points of shoot growth above it. It is not necessary to sprinkle ginger, but additional watering with warm water will be useful.
If there is dry air in the room, the pot can be covered with a bag. In the dim light, warm in two weeks above the surface of the soil seem rich green pointed sprouts of ginger.
Video on how to plant ginger at home, will be a faithful assistant for a novice and experienced grower who has decided to replenish the collection with an exotic and at the same time very useful culture.
Ginger care when grown at home
Talking about how to grow ginger at home, you can not 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 dressings, as well as in watering.
The plant tolerates heat well, but it is extremely sensitive to direct sunlight and cold wind. This is important to consider when choosing a place for a pot with ginger roots. On warm days, it is useful to transfer the container to the garden, to the balcony or verandas, providing the green pet with shading and protection from drafts. If there is no threat of night freezing, with enough watering and care, the ginger can stay here around the clock:
- The warmer the air, the more frequently and more abundantly moisturize the soil.
- A decrease in temperature indicates that watering should be reduced.
On hot days when growing ginger at home, the plant is good at irrigating the leaves with warm soft water. Feedings are carried out every two weeks, using alternately organic fertilizers and mineral supplements. Application:
- nitrogen stimulates foliage growth;Potassium
- will help the plant to form buds;Phosphorus
- has a beneficial effect on the growth of rhizomes.
At the end of the summer, about a month before the foliage wilts, watering is reduced, and feeding is stopped altogether. This measure will push ginger to build root mass.
However, it is not enough to grow ginger at home, how to preserve it for a long time?
After the green part dies, the plant whose roots are intended for human consumption can be removed from the substrate. 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 retain their freshness for up to 3-4 months.
If the florist wants to see ginger blossoms, it is not necessary to extract the rhizomes from the substrate. In dry form, with a slight decrease in temperature, they rest until spring, that is, until the time when the growth buds wake up. In the spring, ginger is useful to feed the potash fertilizer and return the summer irrigation schedule.
Cultivation of ginger at the cottage
Although ginger plants are heat-loving people from the tropics, for some Russian summer residents there is no need to go to the store for sharp, fragrant roots. If the garden has a greenhouse or greenhouse, you can master the cultivation of ginger in the country.
Since the climate of the middle band and too short summer do not allow yields in open field, before planting ginger in the garden, it must be germinated at home. They do it 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 ginger starts growing, it is transferred to greenhouse conditions. This should be done very carefully, trying not to disturb the beginning of the development of the root system.
Before planting ginger, a loose substrate rich in humus is prepared for it, it is richly moistened and allowed to warm up. This will ensure quick and easy acclimatization and will push the plant to strong growth. The organization of regular watering and fertilizing will provide an active increase in the mass of the roots. They are collected at the end of September, when signs of wilting foliage become noticeable.
