they grow very slowly. they need heat. too wet and they rot.

Thanks Randy. I have them in a tropical room, so its about 85F. Is that too warm? I have them in damp peat, should I let them dry out a bit?

sounds like what you are doing is good. patience. it takes 6 months for it to get to 3' tall.

Yeah, I've grown the plant before (grew it like a Canna)...but I've never sprouted the tubers. Wasn't sure how long they took to show signs of life or if they needed any "help".

Thanks!

RipeTomato: Puna ginger/Biker Dude recommends 70-80 degrees for presprouting ginger, with 75 degrees being ideal. They say it'll take 2-3 weeks for ginger to sprout. Some of my ginger sprouted pretty quickly, but the other type took forever. I think white ginger grew quickly and yellow was slow, but I'd have to check my notes from spring. I sprouted my ginger on heat mats and it was hard to keep them at 70 degrees here in March.

Randy, good luck this weekend. Please post your experience, I'm curious to hear how ginger does at your market. I'm going to dig up a bit more ginger this weekend and hope it sells as well as it did last week.

Thanks mdfarmer. I have them at 90F right now, I'll dial back the heat. Wait another couple weeks and see what happens.

here is ginger i harvested today.

and here is some more that i haven't trimmed yet. i think i will trim it all to make it easier to transport.

When do the tubers get the hard skin coating on them?

Wow randy, very nice! I hope it's well received at your market.

the ginger sold very well. caused a lot of discussion with customers and other vendors. i cAn see this as being a very good cash crop. i sold about 6 lbs for $1/oz. i'll take a bit more next time. this is a small market in a small town.
the ginger takes more than 9 months to fully mature and get the brown skin.
if i can get better seed for it i may grow a lot more next year.

I tried to order last two years from EBG and both years I got different answers on why my order was cancelled. This year I am ordering from hawaiianorganicginger.com I heard good things on Old friends farm website.
I understand they used to supply EBG but seems like something happened...

Yesssssssssss! Finally!

Here is an article about ginger in Minnesota.

Here is a link that might be useful: Market article

That's fascinating Minnie. Living in Victoria, BC, we're a bit warmer and have a longer growing season. If they grow anything like cannas, it should be a cinch to get large production here.

Any update on the ginger yields when it was all said and done? Did you get at least 1:4?

i didn't get even 1:4 due to the poor sprouting. i however went ahead and ordered 4 times as much as i did this past year and i will use 2 tunnels to plant it and hope for better results next year. i ordered from the biker dude in hawaii this time. i ordered enough to plant about 400'.

I also ordered from Biker Dude. I got 20lbs of ginger (twice what I had this year) and a few pounds of turmeric.

My yields this year were 1:4, which is better than I feared, but could use improvement. I want to work on increasing my yields next year, I'd really like to get more like 1:6 or 1:7. About a pound of the East Branch ginger rotted in the trays as I was trying to sprout them and never got planted in the ground at all. I'm assuming that was my fault, but I wasn't really comfortable with the ginger I received, as it was a substitution and I have no idea what the source was. If I had been able to plant that rotted out ginger, I think my yields would have been closer to 1:5.

I definitely got better yields on the ginger that I kept in the ground until the end of October, but I'll need to find a different market to sell at if I harvest it all that late in the year. My market only runs until the end of October.

Thanks for sharing your results. I'm thinking about growing ginger and this post has been super helpful.

I'm glad I got my ginger order in early with Biker Dude. I received a message this morning from East Branch that they won't have any seed ginger at all in 2015.

i got that email as well. it looks like the market for organic seed ginger is short on suppliers. i hope what i get from puna is high quality.
when did you ask for delivery to be made? i asked for the end of february. i ordered 120 lbs. not sure yet how i will set that up for sprouting. much planning and work left to be done.

120lbs is pretty ambitious! Are you going to sell that thru direct sales or look for a buyer?

I asked for early March shipping. I've got high hopes for ginger quality as well. Puna seems like they're more reliable than East Branch, but we'll see.

i expect to sell it both ways. i'll plant half my indoor space to it so i can rotate to something else.

i received my ginger order today from puna.

start setting it up for sprouting tomorrow.

Looks great Randy. I haven't gotten my ginger yet, but maybe this week. JB

i sprouted the ginger in heated raised beds in the high tunnel. i started it in early march. i'm now transplanting it. impressively high sprouting %.

First of all, hate the Houzz site. I can't post at all from my iMac, have to use my iPad. Anyway, I like your setup Randy. I had some issues again with my seed pieces rotting before I planted them in my high tunnel, even tho I was very careful not to overwater. Planting in raised beds I'm sure your drainage was better than planting in trays like I did. JB

i'm still working to get all the ginger transplanted. i used grow bags in this tunnel because i don't like the soil.

this is gravity defying

Anybody started harvesting yet? We started harvesting our ginger this week, as customers have been asking for Was a difficult year - got it in late (some not until early June), weeds were almost as tall as the plants before we had time to weed, and our soil drains FAST - so it was a struggle to keep the high tunnel moist enough. Plus - we need new drip. Some holes are quite plugged, and some plants near them just died. All that said - the small part that we dug had some of the biggest rhizomes we have ever harvested, and we have been growing ginger for 3 or 4 years. I've attached a link to pictures. I will try to remember to post our total yield. I think we planted 60 pounds this year - but I'll have to double check. Ginger picture

I started harvesting and selling 2 weeks ago. Sold 20 lbs 2 saturdays ago and sold 40 lbs this past saturday. i'm getting a lot of big pieces but most people want smaller pieces so i end up cutting the big ones up. cleaning them up is the most time consuming part of the harvest. this is currently the only thing i have to sell. i had some of the same problems with irrigation with plugged emitters but for the most part i have a lot of big ginger left to harvest. i started with 120 lbs of seed.

Do you replant what you grow or is that not possible?

as far as i know it has to be grown from mature ginger. the growing season here isn't long enough to grow it to maturity without adding heat and possibly light.

I started harvesting my ginger 2 weeks ago as well. I bring 10-15lbs per market and sell out, don't think I could move anywhere near 40 lbs.

I also had the problem with drip tape clogging and some of the ginger in the rows drying out. I started hose-watering in problem areas.

What is everyone charging for their ginger? I cut the stems off and give those to customers if they want them, but not everyone does. I charge $15/lb for the rhizomes. I may discount that later in the season; last year I offered a discounted rate for anyone buying over 1 lb of ginger.

Khing Yai seems to be my best producer so far, while a lot of my Big Kahuna rotted out in the trays before I got them planted. I must have overwatered them. Turmeric is much slower than the ginger, leaves took an extra month or so to emerge from the ground. I thought the turmeric had all died and was surprised when they came up at all. I've got huge stems and leaves on turmeric now, but not much rhizome growth.

I've already covered my seed cost and have barely begun to harvest, so I'm happy about that.

This year we went up 1$ to $16 / a pound. Our customers are so in love with the product that nobody complains about the price. MD - we tried turmeric this year too. Only a few sprouted in the greenhouse. but it all came up when planted in the high tunnel. Our experience is very similar to yours - very large plants with small rhizomes. We will wait as long as possible to harvest that. What do you plan on charging for turmeric?

i charge $10/lb at one market and $12/lb at the other. i have turmeric growing as well but haven't harvested any yet. i will charge the same for it. i'm trying to make it more accessible which is why the price is lower then i probably could get for it.

Has anyone else started harvesting turmeric? I just dug up an Indira Yellow and it was larger than I expected, but still much smaller than my ginger. I'm trying to attach a photo but don't think it's working. Since the change to houzz, this site doesn't work properly for me. I can do certain things on my iMac, other things on my iPad, but still can't do everything.

I was surprised to see growth at the sides and underneath the seed pieces of turmeric. I thought it would be above it like with the ginger. Anyway, what is everyone else charging for turmeric? My yields are lower than ginger, and I've had a lot of customers asking about it. $20/lb might scare people away but I'm thinking about something like $17.50/lb? I'm going to weigh out some pieces and see if that looks reasonable.

We did start harvesting last week. Not as big as the ginger for sure, but maybe 1/2-3/4 the size. We are charging $16 a pound for both turmeric and ginger. I'll try to attach a picture, but will take more tomorrow when we dig more up.

We are having an issue with having too much ginger this year. We sold out last year in 2.5 weeks, so almost doubled the amount planted this year. We had a 3 day fest just over a week ago that has always been a huge weekend. But the weather was bad, so attendance was way down. Left us with a lot extra, and it doesn't hold well. :( Anybody have any storage secrets?

To top it off, we are supposed to have 2 nights with lows of 27-28 this weekend. Digging it all up at this point would be way to much to sell before it turns colors and looks off. It is in a high tunnel, so I think we will just double row cover it and hope for the best.

Ekgrows, looks good. That's about the size turmeric I'm getting as well, but yours has a darker skin. What type is that one in the last pic?

I'm concerned about cold weather headed my way this weekend too. My ginger and turmeric are in our high tunnel but we're still planning to cover with Agribon and will hope for the best. We had a frost early last year (October 5th or so) and the ginger I had in the field was fine, and all I did was cover it with plastic, so hopefully it'll be ok in the HT.

I've contacted a few grocery stores in my area that have expressed interest in my ginger, but the process of becoming a vendor is taking time, and I'm worried about everything dying from the cold. If I have just a pound or two of leftover ginger when I come home from the market, I candy it. Even sitting out at room temp it will last a few weeks like this. I've been thinking about candying more of it if I need to (5 pounds or so) and sticking it in the freezer. If I'm really stuck with a lot of ginger I may try drying it in my dehydrator and grinding into powder. Seems like kind of a waste, but better than losing it entirely.

I'm going to lower my ginger price at the market this weekend and offer bulk discounts, just try to move as much as I can.

i harvested some turmeric today. none of it was very big. i've been vacuum sealing and refrigerating the ginger i haven't been able to sell yet. the 3 past weeks it has been raining on saturday mornings at the market.

Did everyone's ginger make it thru the cold ok? I foolishly didn't cover mine inside my high tunnel and it got colder than forecast, down to maybe 25. The ginger stems froze, at least the top parts, but the rhizones seem to be ok for now. My ginger's days are numbered for sure.

White mango turmeric wasn't worth it for me, i didn't even get back the pound that i planted. Indira Yellow wasn't bad tho, i got about 5:1. The worst ginger by far for me was Big Kahuna. A lot of it rotted in the trays and never sprouted at all. I only got 1:1 yields, but i wonder if that was user error. Khing Yai was by far the best, i've only dug up half of it but so far it looks like 8:1. It outperformed Bubba Blue and the other yellow (Hawaiian?) by more than double.

Curious to hear how everyone else is doing with the cold weather. The last week or two I've been noticing that my ginger has been getting a bit of a skin to it, doesn't look quite so baby-ginger as it did a few weeks ago. Anyone else noticing this?

the ginger plants look pretty ragged from the cold...mostly at the top of the plants. the rhizomes seem to be fine. the ginger still looks like baby ginger.

We row covered the remaining ginger and turmeric - both came thru 2 27 degree nights fine, which is what we needed. We'll need to dig some for this weekend, but not all of it -and the 10 day looks good.

I've noticed that about a week after harvest it looks more like normal ginger instead of baby. Like the skin hardens or something???

MD - I believe we grew the Red hawaiian turmeric. The boss ordered, and requested big kahuna, and whatever other ginger was recommended. Biker dude said he'd send a nice assortment. When the order came, of the 3 bags of ginger, only one was labeled - and it was the yellow hawaiian. So we really have no idea what was what. But there were definite size differences in the harvest - some was much wider - yet more squat than others - if that makes sense.

Next year we might cut back on the amount of ginger planted, and increase the turmeric. Once we dig it all, and I get the data together, I'll post what our yields were.

For those with excess ginger/turmeric.... I vacumn seal and freeze in small bags to sell thru winter markets, keeps very well for us and a great cash flow in the winter .... Doesn't take much room in the freeze and just take it to market in a lunchbox type cool

Our ginger harvest this week. We had very good yields ... In the neighborhood of over 10 to 1 .... But it's also later than we have ever held ginger in the ground before. Looked to me like it was starting to send up flower stems? Anyone else have similar experiences?

Still have to dig up the last of it to get a total on our return, but I think it is a record year. This is also the latest we have been harvesting, and the longest harvest period - about 2 months. The weather has been up and down, with only 5 nights thus far with a frost / freeze. Row cover is amazing.....

We are not allowed to freeze and later sell produce. Our county is strict, and that would need to be done in a certified kitchen. :(

Hmmm, haven't had much success at moving any plants in, And I am the only one at my market with either ginger or turmeric. I know of a couple of other growers in the state, but none close. Might try to move some inside next year just because the plants are so pretty .... I am able to freeze and sell the excess so no real push to have it available in the winter, but .... Would like to try a bit

John, You can pickle ginger slices with Lemon/ lime juice and salt. It tastes really good. Or you can make candied ginger. Good for sore throat.

I had incredible yields of Khing Yai - there's still some in the ground so I haven't counted it all yet, but looks like at least 10:1. Yellow Hawaiian was only 3:1, Bubba Blue was 4:1. Big Kahuna was a flop, 1:1. It rotted in the trays and didn't sprout.

I can't sell frozen ginger without having an approved kitchen. I've candied a lot of ginger and started making ginger chews and hard candy. Both of these freeze well, make nice gifts and are good for cold and flu season. I get about a cup of juice from a pound of ginger. I puree it in a food processor and strain with a sieve. I use 1.5 cups white sugar, 3/4 cup corn syrup and 1 cup of ginger juice. I use a candy thermometer and heat it to 250 degrees for the chews, 300 degrees for hard candy. Makes a very spicy candy.

I managed to find a grocery store to sell some of my ginger to. I got $10/lb, and they sold it at $15/lb in the store. The could only sell around 10 lbs a week tho. I can easily sell that much at even a moderately busy farmers' market, and was surprised they couldn't move it more quickly. The "baby" part of it doesn't seem to be as important as local and organic.

I cut back on the amount of ginger I'm growing next year, but am growing more turmeric. I've talked to a few produce buyers who are very interested in turmeric, even if they don't want ginger. I think I'm going to lower my prices next year, maybe $8/lb wholesale for ginger and $10-$12/lb at the farmers' market. Maybe higher for turmeric, depending on my yields.

I made a mistake in not covering my ginger inside my high tunnel when it got into the 20's. The stems and leaves froze, but it took a few weeks for them to completely die off. It's been about a month now and the ginger that's still in the ground looks great. Some of my ginger had developed a skin, but I think those plants had dried out; it doesn't seem to be from freezing.