Turmeric and Ginger

You’re probably all familiar with ginger and most of us have used it ground or fresh. We use a lot of fresh ginger, especially since I’ve been on my wonton binge. A while back, I think I mentioned that I had ordered some edible ginger plants. They arrived recently and have been planted and are already showing signs of new growth.

It isn’t real clear in the picture but there’s new growth shooting up from the dirt and in just several weeks that these plants have been growing, they have quite a bit of new growth.

I’m going to continue growing them in pots so I can put them in the greenhouse during winter. From what I’ve read, I believe the roots will continue to multiply and when I need fresh ginger, I’ll just dig down, grab a piece of the root, break it off and the plant just continues to grow.

Then I got to thinking . . why can’t I plant storebought ginger roots? I googled it and yes, I can! So, I did.

It’s been over a week and I can barely see a few puffy spots that I think are soon going to be shoots coming out. We’ll see. 

Can you imagine how yummy freshly harvested ginger must taste?

The other day I was in a whole foods type store and they had fresh turmeric. I’m not going to go into it here but turmeric is supposed to have so many health benefits. There are at least two types of turmerics. One is curcuma zedoaria, which has more of a white rhizome, is closer to ginger than the turmeric most of us are familiar with in spices. There’s also curcuma longa, which is dried and ground and sold as the common spice, turmeric, most of us are familiar with. The rhizomes of this one are more of an orange color. I’m pretty sure the ones I bought are the curcuma longa variety but I didn’t want to cut into them.

I didn’t want to cut into them because I wanted to plant them! When I saw them at the store, I thought . . these look like ginger. I’m betting I should be able to plant them just like I did the ginger and they should grow. I bought just these two. They were $19/pound so I didn’t want to get much, though I wish I had bought 4 or 5 instead of 2.

After a quick google search, I learned that yes . . I can plant them exactly as I did the ginger so . . I did. We’ll see what happens with these. My luck, some critter is going to ea them I have them sitting on a table with all my other potted experiments. It could be quite intriguing for a squirrel but I hope not.

Soon, hopefully I’ll have sprouting ginger and turmeric!