Ginger is a popular spice in dishes all over the world, especially Vietnamese people. It is considered as an indispensable item in the kitchen. In addition to making meals more delicious, ginger also has great uses in many remedies.
How to grow ginger at home is not too complicated. Thus, in case you want to own a ginger plant, keep reading this article to learn about how to grow ginger at home with the essential attention in the care process.
Great Uses Of Ginger
According to scientists, the nutrients and active ingredients in ginger have a positive impact on your body and brain.
To Relieve Osteoarthritis And Myalgia
The chemical components in ginger help inhibit the biosynthesis of prostaglandins that cause inflammation, improving knee arthritis, and pain. Drinking ginger tea or soaking your hands and feet with piece of ginger in diluted ginger water every 15-20 minutes can cure arthritis. This therapy is effective in reducing symptoms of pain and swelling.
To Extend The Life
Using ginger products from grocery store ginger regularly also has anti-aging effects, prolonging life. Ginger is loaded with antioxidants that help eliminate free radicals from your body and prevent cell damage.
To Reduce The Risk Of Alzheimer’s Disease
The essences in culinary ginger help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. It also helps protect you against age-related cognitive decline.
To Help Treat Nausea
If you feel nauseous, you can drink a cup of ginger tea, and you will feel a lot better in a short time.
To Relieve Stress
Thanks to the Cineole substance, fresh ginger can help you relieve stress, treat migraines, and help you sleep better and more refreshingly. Ginger also alleviates toothache or discomfort caused by respiratory infections thanks to its antibacterial and antifungal properties.
How To Grow Ginger At Home?
In case you would like to have a indoor garden with many plants, you can plant your ginger at home right now.
Choose Ginger Varieties
When you want to grow your own ginger, consider your purposes to choose the right ginger variety. However, if you grow ginger indoors for domestic use, you should select small ginger rhizomes like “Gung De” and “Gung Se”.
Do not choose large tubers as they tend to taste light, and the plants grow quite large. When you select a small ginger type, the collected ginger will have a spicy and aromatic flavor. It also will not take up much space in your home.
Prepare Soil And Pots
You can use porcelain or plastic pots from grocery store with dimensions of 30-35cm width and 35-40cm height. If possible, you should use earthenware pots, which hold moisture and drain well.
Besides, you can also plant ginger in sacks instead of potting soil. The advantage of this approach is that it helps this tropical plants grow better due to the excellent soil environment. It also provides many nutrients and good drainage.
Ginger soil also has specific requirements. Although ginger is an easy-to-grow and suitable for many lands, it is recommended to use loamy, porous, and well-drained soil. You can also create potting mix by mixing clean soil with nutrients in a ratio of 2:1 to get better results.
Time To Grow Ginger
If you want to have a herb garden with ginger, you can start planting ginger root in early spring (January, February) or late spring (April, May). Also, planting time of ginger can be at the end of the year (October, November, and December). Ginger development and growth time to harvest is about 8–10 months, depending on the variety of ginger.
Proceed To Easily Grow Ginger
To grow ginger root indoors with large numbers of tubers and high yield, you should follow these steps:
- Step 1: Soak the ginger root in warm water and leave it overnight.
- Step 2: Next, cut the ginger into small pieces (about a knuckle). Take care not to cut into the ginger eye and remove the living ginger root without germ.
- Step 3: Take the previously prepared soil into 1/2 pot and compress moderately. Next, put 2-3 ginger branches down and cover the land up to 2.5-3 cm.
- Step 4: Put the pot in the shade and avoid direct sunlight. The best place to put ginger pots is on the porch or in a bright room. You can also place trees in areas where the light is shining 5-6 hours a day. At that time, the tree will produce more tubers.
Water The Plant
Although ginger is a moisture-loving plant, its tolerance to waterlogging is poor. Therefore, you need to provide moderate moisture to the soil during plant growth. At the beginning of planting, you should water the plant 1-2 times every day. In case you leave the tree outdoors in the rain, you may not need to water it.
Also, it would be best if you stopped watering after 7-8 months. It is time for the tree to lose its leaves, and you are about to harvest the ginger.
Fertilize The Ginger Plant
When you grow and care ginger indoors, you should limit the use of pesticides. Also, you have to regularly weed and apply more chemical fertilizers (you can buy them at the local grocery store) on the ground to help your plants grow more prominent. However, the most important thing is still the moisture of the soil and the light regime for the tree.
Harvest Ginger
From the fifth month onwards, you can dig for ginger root. When ginger has 2/3 of the gold leaf, you can harvest it. When harvesting, pay attention to avoid breaking or crushing ginger, which makes pests easy to penetrate.
After planting for about 7-8 months, the ginger tree will grow enough, and the leaves will wither. Meanwhile, you do not need to water, and the ginger can be harvested at any time.
The harvesting technique to avoid breaking the ginger is to keep the whole ginger bundle and dig about 20-25cm deep. Then, pull slightly to get it all and trim all the soil to get the desired ginger.
Conclusion
In general, we have finished discussing how to grow ginger at home with essential notes in the ginger care process. Now, you absolutely can design some ginger pots on the balcony or terrace of your house. It helps create a clean green environment, but it also enables you to save money and bring delicious meals to you. Good luck!
Source: Gardening 101