Listen to marylandmojo--Turmeric is slowly being recognized as an important antioxidant. It also works on arthritis. The Prostate Cancer web site has recognized it's value in treating men on andorgen therapy (it stops swollen and sore breasts which is one of the side effects of the therapy)! Maybe it will women with hot flashes--who knows--it's a natural food and hopefully with few or no side effects! Try it--lets see how many ways it can help us. I'm taking it daily for arthritis. No huge changes yet--it's only been 3 weeks--but I'm feeling improvement. Turmeric taste awful but if it will reduce the swelling in my arthritic joints and make the pain go away--what more could I ask? I can buy it in the grocery store--it's inexpensive and why don't we hear more about it? Because it's not profitable to the drug companies and doctors.

As mentioned, ginger rhizomes(?) from the grocery store will grow fine. I have done the same with tumeric from a health food store. I soak each in warm water for an hour or so to try to wash off any sprouting inhibiters. I'm going to ask a friend in Los Angeles to look out for galangal in Asian markets, as I can't find it fresh in stores or mail-order nurseries (one may be able to find it seasonally fresh for consumption by mail order; I haven't looked recently). I'd like to find grains of paradise and the real cardamom as well.

Turmeric is a Curcuma, it's botanical name is Curcuma longa. The curcumas are deciduous gingers, they naturally go dormant in the winter season, even in the tropics. Their main trigger for dormancy is the fact that the rainfall in the tropics is seasonal, and they go dormant in the dry season. They re-emerge when the rains start up again. Temperature has very little to do with it in the true tropics. The dry season in the true tropics coincides pretty nicely with winter here in the temperate zones. Deciduous gingers like curcumas, zingibers and globbas go dormant A) when the rainy summer season passes and B) when the days really start to shorten. My Curcuma petiolata has already started going dormant. It is always the first one to do so. The others (Scarlet Fever, inodora, australasica, etc) usually can hang on til first frost in NOvember/December. I keep my Turmeric in a pot just because we have a lot of predation by armadillos and wild pigs, and I actually want to get a large enough rhizome mass to harvest some for cooking someday. I just stash the pot in a corner of the greenhouse when it gets cold and let the plant go dormant, then I ignore it until about March 15th. I start watering again then and the plants pop back up and then apply Nutricote. My plants have tripled in number over 2 seasons.

I have some Cliff. You mean you didn't ask me when you saw me in Mount Dora? Shame on you...lol Since you've moved farther away from me I can still ship you some, I have plenty here at the nursery, actually about 5 varieties.