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Leaving gingers planted in beds for winter

13 years ago

I was wondering if my beehive and shampoo gingers will be alright in the ground in zone 9 Louisiana . And if I leave them there will they bloom next year. Thanks in advance.

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Comments (9)

lac1361
13 years ago
They will be just fine. Your two gingers are Zingibers and they are basal bloomers. The plant's rhizome has to have enought mass to bloom. If they are young plants with a small rhizome and root structure, they may not bloom next year but definitely should the following year.

Steve
progfreak
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks. I just purchased around 20 new Ginger plants and was just wondering.
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In my garden gingers like the same type of soil all my tropicals enjoy - dark black top soil mixed with lots of compost and fine bark mulch. They like to get watered every day but hate to sit in wet soil (thats why I put in bark mulch). I don't test it for pH so I don't know if it is acid or not. I have to make new soil for them every year and they do better if I feed them every month during the summer (compost or fertilizer). I have seen ginger farms in the tropics where they grow it in solid clay or gravelly lava chips so I think this group of plants will adapt to whatever you want to grow it in. What I do is buy the cheapest bag of top soil, black cow compost, and pine bark fines (sold often as Soil Conditioner around here). I mix all of them together and add a shovel full or two of my sandy garden soil. The end product is fluffy and kinda coarse with big chucks of fiber and bark. I grow them in the shade. The ones that are on the edge and get more light need more water. Gingers are strange in that they can do this dormant thing where they just go to sleep and you cannot wake them up. I've had roots sit in the pot for years and then one day they sprouted. Sometimes they rot for no reason and other times they just sit there in the dirt and never sprout. Heat seems to be an important trigger but sometimes even it doesn't work. It can be hard to get them to sprout on a schedule. I start right after Christmas and hope I have baby plants up and growing by March 1st and I plant them outside in mid May or whenever it starts to get pretty hot (they don't die if they get cool but they don't grow either).
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Gingers in this Northerly climate are tricky things. I manage to get my Daniel Weeks ginger to bloom late in the fall, just before the frost hits. I also have a H. gardnerianum (from a root bought from the Kona airport in Hawaii several years back) which just sent up an inflorescence this fall, but isn't quite getting to bloom fully. It doesn't bloom as early as the Daniel Weeks I've discovered. I'm starting to wonder if there are certain plants that just are meant to be grown south of z6 and not worth the effort North of that. I love zone denial and all, but its a lot of effort for little enjoyment. To answer your question: What I do is dig them up before the frost does major damage. I put them in as large a pot as I can handle, splitting off any outliers and roots that can't make it into the pot. Sometimes I completely spray off all topsoil and replant with fresh soiless potting mix to reduce bugs and diseases. From there they live in my screened porch for couple weeks to finish blossoming and then they live either in the house or more often in the basement by a south window. Give them just a little water to keep them on life support for the duration of the winter/early spring months. Too much water and they tend to rot. They don't need to be completely happy and look a bit rough by spring, but they come back vigorously once they are planted in the spring after the last frost. Alternatively you can prune off the tops, hose off the soil if you like and store them dry in peat for the winter as you would with cannas. They are solid rhizomes should survive. Hope this helps!
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There is a very hardy bromeliad that has green leaves with simple red blooms that doesn't grow more then a foot high. I can't remember the name of it but both my parents and I have decent sized patches of them and I've never seen any frost damage on them even though we live in a cold spot in zone 9a. You could plant something like that and mix some other plants like jungle gold peacock ginger or purple queen in for some extra summer time color. Here's what the brom looks like when not in bloom. If you're interested I can probably bread off a few starts from one of the larger clumps of plants and mail them to you. Here's another tough variety of brom that I unfortuneatly don't know the name of. The trick to finding cold hardy broms seems to be in how serrated the leaf edges are. It seems like the more teeth a plant has the hardier it is! And here's a variety of brom that I think is related to the painted finger nail. These are growing at the base of a large oak and I've never covered them even in the hardest freeze. Jungle gold peacock ginger and another type that again I can't quite remember the name of. I believe that jungle gold is the largest of the peacock gingers but it still doesn't get over a foot tall. Kara
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lac1361
13 years ago
From where did you buy 20 ginger plants and are there any other varieties other than Beehive and Shampoo.

Steve
progfreak
Original Author
13 years ago
Stokes tropicals in new Iberia. 75%off. I got hedy,s Daniel weeks, Elizabeth, double eagle, peach, sunburst, 4 diff costas, and the shampoo and beehive along with some black bamboo, musa ice cream, Chinese musa, thai golden musa, black thai, gold finger, musa banjo, 3 different dragon fruits, a rainbow eucalyptus, a dawn redwood, musa balbasina, another type of banana I can't remember at the moment, and 3 other hedy's
lac1361
13 years ago
Quite a collection of plants. You must have visited the nursery in person. Where in Louisiana do you live?

Steve
TimChapman
13 years ago
You may want to keep the beehive Ginger (assuming it is Zingiber spectabile). This is a tropical evergreen that can return after winter here in Zone 8 Louisiana , but it comes back smaller and eventually won't come back. It is questionable in zone 9. But if you want to try it make sure you start with a decent size plant. Not to be a downer but most of the evergreen zingibers just don't adapt well to dormancy and cold winters. The related shampoo Ginger Zingiber zerumbet that you got will do just fine year after year. Sometimes it won't bloom the first season after planting but once established it's very reliable.

Tim Chapman
progfreak
Original Author
13 years ago
I live in New Iberia about 20 minutes from stokes. Thanks for the input. I may bring the beehive Ginger indoors for the winter so it can gain some size. What are some other great tropicals I can get away with planting outside here?
lac1361
13 years ago
I've had good luck with Costus Barbatus planted on the south side of my house. It's been a very reliable bloomer for me since 2002. Was completely frozen to the ground last winter and recently bloomed on two stalks. I like the Curcuma gingers as well. The above poster, Tim Chapman, is a world class expert on all gingers. I going to put in a plug for him and his web site, gingerwood nursery. He's a Louisiana guy and sells lots of different curcumas.

Musa Coccinea is a very nice ornamental banana that I've grown for years; nice bloom. If you have significant shade areas, the Globba gingers are very nice. You should be able to grow both the white bird of paradise and the orange bird of paradise and get both to bloom over time.

I see a very invasive banana on your list of purchases. The Thai Gold banana is a serious runner rather than a clumper. Once established, it will grow laterally 3 or 4 feet in a year. If you plant it in the ground, give it a lot of space because it will end up a half a mile away from its original planting area.

You can also grow Heliconia Scheideana but the likelyhood of seeing blooms will be remote. Still the foliage is nice and the leaves have a red edge to them. They come back every year. If you have a place to protect container grown plants, I like Heliconia Rostrata. This heliconia is a medium sized heliconia and can be bloomed in a container and it is a knock out bloom.

Steve
progfreak
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks for all the great info. I need to look into finding me a musa Coccinea. I also think I'm gonna run back to stokes for some more curcuma's. I currently have a scarlet fever that's 2 years old and I think I saw some globba's also picking up some dendrclamus bamboo and a cotton silk kapok tree

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