Tatiousness

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Sunday, September 19, 2010

In seems that most people think of ginger as an exotic spice grown in the Middle East and not as a simple rhizome that can be grown indoors. It is a fragrant and healthy addition to stir-fries and chutneys or relishes. If you live in an area where the local grocery store sells the plump roots, then you should be able to grow ginger quite easily in your home.

Difficulty: Easy

Things You'll Need:

potting soil sand ginger roots planting pot shady warm spot.

1
Go shopping. Find a grocery store that sells a wide variety of fresh vegetables and look for ginger. Pick a tuber that is plump and tight in its skin and not shrunken or wilted. There should almost be a shine to it and the color of the skin should be a light sandy beige.
2
Prepare your soil. Ginger likes to grow in light, moist soil and prefers shade to sun. It grows almost like bamboo in that the rhizomes it produces lay just under the surface of the ground and grow by spreading outward. Use a light weight potting soil and add one part sand to three parts soil. Mix it well and fill your pot about three quarters full.
3
Push some soil aside and lay the ginger on its side in the middle of the pot. Any buds should be facing upwards, as they are the beginning of new stems. Cover it with the pushed aside soil until covered by about one inch of soil. Tamp it down lightly and place it in a window with indirect light. Make sure you have a good drainage tray underneath. The biggest requirement for ginger is warmth.
4
Make sure you use a balanced mix of nitrigen, phosphorus and potassium, as ginger is a heavy feeder. Be sure to keep the soil diluted with water. The typical grocery store ginger plant does not produce fruit and only rarely flowers so the more leaves it grows the more photosynthesis happens, making the rhizomes grow even faster. Water the ginger daily but make sure the soil stays moist and not soggy. Keep the drainage tray separate from the pot by setting some pebbles in the tray before setting down the pot. This should maintain good drainage. However, if you see water reaching the bottom of the pot, remove the water.
5
After a few weeks of growing good strong stems and leaves, check under the surface of the soil for new plump rhizomes. Slice them off cleanly for your first taste of fresh ginger. You will also know there is new growth when the new little green shoots pop up from new areas in the pot. This ginger will not be as pungent as the mature ginger rhizomes that you will harvest later. Typically the ginger will grow for about ten months and then the leaves will yellow and die off. This is normal and is the time to stop watering daily and only lightly water about once a month to keep the rhizomes from drying out. Each year, if you do not harvest too much of the ginger, your mat of rhizomes will get thicker and you will be able to dig them up in the fall. Let them dry out and then use them in your favorite recipes.

From Ehow.com:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4576842_grow-ginger-indoors.html#ixzz100OJJsMn

peppers over-wintering

Q.Dear Mike: I grew bell pepper plants this summer in 17" containers. I've heard you mention that you bring yours indoors each winter and grow them under fluorescent lights. Am thinking of doing the same. But you’ve said that you get peppers only until around Thanksgiving. Why can’t you get them to continue producing through the winter? Thanks; your show is the best!

---Bruce in Norwood, Pa.

A. ‘Dank you, boys—this is one of my favorite tricks! Yes—peppers (hot and sweet) are perennial plants that will live for many, many years if protected from frost.

If your pepper plants are in the ground, transfer them into pots right away. I like to fill such containers with a mix of 1/3 compost and 2/3 loose, seed-starting mix when I’m starting out fresh, but we don’t want to stress these puppies with a lot of repotting. So just dig a circle around each plant with a sharp shovel, pop it out of the ground with enough dirt attached that no roots are showing, and slide it into a big plastic (NOT terra cotta) pot. Do this in the evening; never in the morning or heat of the day.

If the Island of Earth you have excavated is a little too big, shave dirt off the sides till it fits. If there’s room for moresoil inside the pot, add some compost, not more garden soil. Then water well and put the pots in a shady spot for a few days.

If your plants are already in pots, pick up here.

LONG before frost (while nighttime temps are still in the 50s) rinse the plants off REALLY well in the garden with sharp streams of water. Wait a few hours, move the plants to a different spot in the garden and repeat. Then bring them inside to a porch or other appropriate in-between place, wait a day or two and inspect the plants well for aphids and other pests. If you see any, rinse them in the tub or shower twice; one day apart. If you see no pests, do it once.

Then place them directly under a “shoplight”; that means a fixture housing two, four-foot long, 40W Cool White florescent bulbs. NOT “plant lights”; like me, these theoretically-perfect plant growers are just too dim. Always keep the tops of the plants almost toughing the bulbs—the light intensity of these fixtures drops off dramatically after just a few inches, and florescent light is cool, so closeness doesn’t harm the plants.

I’ve always left my lights on 24/7. If that makes you nervous, you can turn them off for a few hours every night. Peppers like it warm, so don’t let the temp drop below 55°. A range of 60 to 70° is ideal.

Do not feed the plants, and water only when the pots feel light. This will ripen up any green fruits, and then keep the plants alive till next Spring, when you will be putting those big honkin’ puppies out in the garden instead of the puny little starts your neighbors will be buying at the garden center. These big plants produce ripe peppers FAST!

Now, you can keep your plants flowering and fruiting over the winter if you provide warm temps and REALLY bright light. That means:

A fixture with FOUR, four-foot florescent tubes,
A two tube fixture sitting overtop of plants that also receive very bright light from a sunny South-facing window,
Or high-intensity lights like sodium vapor or metal halide (which give off lots of heat—keep all plants several feet away from such lights).

If you choose to do this, provide food and water like it was during the summer and enjoy the peppers.

Oh, and this trick works even better with impatiens and begonias. (I have one pot of impatiens that’s at least four years old!) And because these pretty perennial posies are shade-lovers, they don’t need a lot of light. Just put them under a two-tube fixture or sit them in a sunny window and they’ll bloom most of the winter, providing great indoor color and BIG plants for the Spring—both for free!