13.4211° N, 144.7397° E

Elaine, you beat me by seconds!

BabyK said:13.4211° N, 144.7397° E

Ahah!!



Does the sun shine 24 hours a day there?

@DavidLMO

http://www.gaisma.com/en/locat...

She's not in Alaska, David.

Here in the Puget Sound area (zone 8b), my culinary ginger does very well as a foliage houseplant. In summer, it lives outside on a shady porch. In winter, it lives in the sunniest window I have. The trigger point for moving it in/out is night temps in the low 50s. It's amazingly undemanding for being so far out of its natural habitat.

What it doesn't do for me is make usable rhizomes. I'm sure it's a cultural issue - if you are cultivating culinary ginger and getting rhizomes, please tell me how you are doing it!

@jacqueg - my first time growing the culinary ginger. Pretty plant - yep. No indication of bloom. Not sure what I will do with it this winter. I have SO many more tropicals than I did last year. If I dig it up/unpot, I will let you know if it expanded. It was my second attempt - first one rotted.

I have 3 ginger and only my white is showing an inflo.

My biggest problem with the gingers and Turmeric is determining how much sun. I seem to have hit a happy medium with not much. I have my 2 ornamental gingers on my large screen porch where they get filteres light and now they seem happy. I was giving them way too much sun outdoors and the leaves burned.

I have the store bought culinary ginger and Turmeric in my pretend greenhouse over which I placed a sun screen. They are both shaded and I mist them. They are likely in Zone 10 or so conditions. It stays about 10 degrees warmer than outside temps and lately it has been ~ 80 - 85.

Yeah, down here where those gingers grow wonderfully outdoors, they are water and fertilizer hogs and mine get some morning sun. I haven't grown culinary ginger for years just because so many others bloom and are prettier, but the clump I had at our other house grew to well over 7ft. one summer. Big fat rhizomes, too. They were under a gutter that overflowed on a regular basis all summer when it rained which is pretty often. They got timed-release pelleted fert at double the recommended rate and ate it all up.

Maybe I'm not fertilizing enough, I'll try that.

I've been growing culinary ginger for about 3 years. I started with an organic root and then cut into pieces to plant. Since then, I'm never without fresh ginger when I need it. I'm using a fairly large plastic pot and, at this point, have around 12 to 15 plants although the roots aren't crowded (yet). I take it outdoors when temps will be above 55 or so and it comes back into the house when temps will be below the same. They do like ample moisture, heat and humidity. Mine did get off to a slow start this spring because it was cool and rainy but started growing in earnest mid-summer when it was really warm. I keep them growing indoors during the cold months with either a sunny window or supplemental light and mist almost daily. I do use an organic fertilizer and rainwater (if I have it) to keep them going through winter. Some of the foliage will die back but that's ok by me since the root can still be harvested. It will regrow foliage in the spring. I use the basic Pro Mix with a good organic potting soil (like Happy Frog) or compost mixed in so that it's fairly rich.

Shade gardener, thanks for sharing your experience.

My plant lives in a 5-gallon pot, and I make the inside/outside transition by temperature as you do. I just divided and repotted, the pot is filled with shoots connected by very skinny (maybe 1/8" inch?) rhizomes. Do you deliberately keep your plants thinned? That might be another thing I should be doing. I could be watering more, but my plant(s) looks very green and healthy, with new shoots all the time, so I have thought I was providing sufficient water. I could also give it more light, but again, if a plant is growing well, I tend to think I am giving it what it needs!

Hmm - I'm not sure what's causing the skinny rhizomes for you. If they're that skinny, they have a lot of growing to do. Mine are fat gnarly things. I don't purposely thin them but if I dig up a rhizome that's too big for what I need, I break off a piece and replant the remainder. I don't harvest the whole big pot but only dig up what I need. Last year my foliage was about 2 to 2 1/2 feet tall. This year a little shorter due to cool spring. I do keep the soil damp but not wet. It might have liked our humidity a while back when it really put on a growth spurt. Most of the foliage will die back by early spring, being indoors but I'm trying a new location for it this year so maybe the foliage will hang on longer. I don't repot them but will add some compost in the spring along with some liquid seaweed.

When you have them outdoors, where are they located? Full shade? I now have mine with my Turmeric in my shaded pretend greenhouse.

I keep my edible ginger on my patio where it gets an hour or two of afternoon sun. No direct sun most of the time - guess I'd call it bright shade. Even now in the little GH, I still have the shade cloth up because the sun has been pretty strong here with the current weather. The shade cloth will come down in another week or two when the sun moves lower and our skies get cloudier.

My gingers do like a little bit of direct sun, and they are situated so they get morning sun, strong Florida sun, until about 11am in summer. Then bright filtered shade the rest of the day.

DavidLMO said:When you have them outdoors, where are they located? Full shade? I now have mine with my Turmeric in my shaded pretend greenhouse.

Yes, it spends the summer on a north-facing porch which is surrounded by trees. The only sun it gets is a bit of filtered sun in the late afternoon.

During the winter, it lives in a south-facing window, where it gets some direct mid-day sun, but this is winter sun in a northern rainy climate.

Shadegardener said:I keep my edible ginger on my patio where it gets an hour or two of afternoon sun. No direct sun most of the time - guess I'd call it bright shade. Even now in the little GH, I still have the shade cloth up because the sun has been pretty strong here with the current weather. The shade cloth will come down in another week or two when the sun moves lower and our skies get cloudier.

So it sounds like I need to

1) increase the summer fertilizing
2) increase the summer sun

Question about fertilizing - will any houseplant fertilizer work? Weakly weekly?

I wish I could give my plants morning sun but I have a lot of oaks to the east.
As for fertilizing, remember that you're going to be eating your ginger. I personally use an organic granular fertilizer in the spring but then use fish/seaweed liquid fertilizer maybe mid-summer. You could probably give it diluted liquid maybe once a month at most.

When it comes to Hedychium and Zingiber I feed them heavy. After the winter I throw away 1/2 to 2/3 of the plant to have room in the pots (20 litre) again and fill up with fresh compost with added organic fertilizer. Once growing I feed every 1-2 weeks with a common mineral fertilizer: I need speed otherwise they will not bloom in our relatively short and cool season. Overwintering I do in a cool room, outside is a certain death (winter can in some years go down to -20C, thats roughly 0F).
Cautleya and Roscoea on the other hand are winterhardy overhere as long as they are well drained.

Ruud

Weakly weekly isn't going to cut it for a ginger, except maybe if you're overwintering it in the house. That's good for foliar feeding orchids and epiphytes, but not for big leafy plants that make big rhizomes.

Outside in warm weather, a pelleted time-release fertilizer is the way to go, and mine get a double dose to what the label says. Because you're also watering heavily in warm weather, the fert gets used up faster. I've never yet had any sort of fertilizer burn on any gingers. They just make more leaves.

Definitely they could take more sun, although preferably morning sun and maybe late afternoon sun. They do love the heat, and lots of humidity too. I'm originally from Vancouver, BC just north of you there, so I remember the long, warm summer days and nice cool nights. Give your gingers as much heat as you can find for them without burning the leaves.