Our first big success of the new year...

Though the heat is on this Summer, we’ve had more success with Ginger, Turmeric and Galangal than we’ve ever had.

We’ve tried growing each before, with limited success…very limited. This year though, we got some Galangal and Ginger rhizomes with well developed buds from an Indian supermarket. They were grown locally so they had to be good.

Our friend, Sue gave us some Turmeric rhizomes that already had leaves and roots.

In preparation, I did some extra YouTube research and found two things that we’d been doing wrong.

First, we’d been growing them in part shade. They love the full Sun, so we compromised with the wild weather and planted them in pots near the aquaponics where they got good, but slightly broken Sun.

Next was the water. It turns out that, in previous years, we’d been over watering them a lot. These plants, especially Ginger like plenty of water but they don’t like it to sit around.

We’d aways left trays under the pots in the past to ensure the soil remained damp. That’s not good for these guys. Regular water that passes by the roots is the answer. In each case, I’ve let the whole pot almost dry out each time before watering. The results are speaking for themselves.

We had spare rhizomes of each and planted them in various other locations and conditions to try and work out where they would do best. At the end Autumn (if we get one this year), we’ll lift them up and see which did best.

The Galangal is way behind the other two, bit this is the first year that we’ve seen a leaf form, so that’s already a big win for us!