Harvesting and storing home-grown ginger
Early, February, planting of ginger allows you to harvest at the end of November. As soon as the bush stops growing, the upper points of growth begin to dry out, and the stems fall apart, you can start digging out the tubers, during which time they have already grown enough and are ready for use.
Young ginger roots have a more delicate taste, they retain a specific aroma, but not as hot.
How to harvest tubers correctly
If, while the ginger is in the open air, a cold snap is predicted, and not enough time has passed for digging up from the moment of planting, the pot must be taken indoors. There, the bush will be able to grow tubers.
1.5-2 weeks before harvesting, that is, digging out tubers, watering should be completely stopped. Without moisture, the remaining green stems will lay down and dry faster.
When the plant is wilted, you should:
- Carefully remove the bush along with the earthy clod. Often it does not work in another way, because ginger grows very wide in breadth, and its roots are tightly intertwined in the soil.
- Remove the substrate from the tubers.
- Remove the old tuber from which the bush has grown.
- Trim the adventitious roots.
- Cut off the stems.
- Rinse young nodules well in water.
Young ginger can be consumed immediately or sent for storage.
How to store grown ginger
Before defining the tubers for storage, they must be dried within 2-3 days, placing them on a well-lit windowsill. Fresh ginger can be well stored for more than a month in a cool dry room such as a basement or just in the refrigerator. First, it must be wrapped in parchment or cling film.
What if there are dormant growth points on the tuber?
Sometimes it happens that in the presence of drying out shoots in the pot there is still a tuber with dormant buds, which are just beginning to wake up. In this case ginger until you need to dig it up, but leave it in the pot until about February, so that the tubers grow a little.
Also, this ginger can be used purely for decorative purposes. To do this, for the winter, put a flowerpot with a plant on the south or southeast window or under a lamp. Unlike the summer season, ginger requires good lighting in winter. With the arrival of summer, the bush must be taken out into the garden again, and the next winter - taken into the house. As a result of such manipulations, in the third year of the plant's life, it is quite possible to see its flowering.