Growing Ginger in Seattle

This is the first year that I tried growing ginger in Seattle. I’m kind of a ginger fiend, and I have become a bit of an urban gardening weirdo, so growing ginger just made sense.

I don’t like to grow anything expensive that I could kill, and I don’t like to do much more than water and fertilize my garden. I usually grow indigenous plants from seed or tuber, so growing ginger was a little out of my comfort zone. Turns out it was a total piece of cake. It just doesn’t grow in zone 8a the way it does in warmer climes.

I had some ginger sprouting on my countertop, and planted it sprout up in April in some potting soil on a south eastern (read: hot during the hottest part of the day) second floor deck. This is where we planted tomatoes, and they went nuts this year because it was so warm, so the ginger did pretty well. I made sure to set the ginger out of direct sunlight behind the tomatoes when it got really hot.

Here’s what it looked like when I pulled it up and got it washed off.

The tubers are the part that you normally would grind up and use in recipes, but the leaves are edible too, and make a great garnish for all kinds of Indian and Middle Eastern dishes. I hear you can saute it as well, but I haven’t tried that yet. They have a really mild, light flavor, but they are kind of tough, so they aren’t really great on salads.

I just removed the leaves and stems, put them into the food processor and pulverize them.

I’ve heard that you can overwinter the ginger indoors and it will double in size, but I think instead, I’ll just plant a whole lot more next year!