Harvest fresh ginger from your own garden

Content

• Harvest fresh ginger from your own garden
• Ginger leaves and tubers from own cultivation
• Various uses for ginger in the kitchen
• The harvest of ginger leaves
• Processing and storage of ginger rolls
• Ginger overwinter and dry
• Tips & Tricks

Harvest fresh ginger from your own garden

In the local kitchens, the tuber of ginger has primarily been established as a spice and tea base in recent years. If you grow ginger in the garden, you can also harvest the fresh ginger leaves for consumption.

Earlier article Ginger as a flowering plant and multiply for consumption

Ginger leaves and tubers from own cultivation

In our latitudes, the season for the cultivation of tropical ginger outdoors is approximately from March to November. The tubers needed for this are usually obtained year-round in the vegetable department of every well-stocked supermarket. For a recurring cultivation, all tubers are taken out of the soil in the autumn and a certain part of it wintered for the renewed culture in the spring.

Various uses for ginger in the kitchen

If the commercially available tubers in March in a bucket with nutrient-rich soil set, fresh ginger leaves can be harvested from about June for use in tasty salads. For the harvest of the tubers wait for the yellowing of the leaves in autumn from then you can dig out the tubers from the soil and use or prepare for storage.

The harvest of ginger leaves

The fresh leaves of the ginger can be used as a component of green salads, as they have a very aromatic taste. Make sure, however, that removing leaves also deprives the plants of energy and the possibility of tuber blunting. However, with the right amount of leaf cutting, you can still harvest ginger tubers in the fall for use as a spice or in tea blends.

Processing and storage of ginger rolls

Freshly dug-out ginger rolls develop their full aromatic spectrum only from the time the leaves turn yellow in autumn. Then parts of the tuber can be cut into small pieces or grated as a spice or used for tea infusions. If you harvest larger quantities of ginger tubers, you can use them for propagation or dry for use as a spice.

Ginger overwinter and dry

You can use tubers and pieces of tubers that should not be smaller than a game cube for re-planting in spring. Store these cleaned of soil in a cool, dry and dark basement room. For use in the kitchen, you can preserve ginger by cutting it into thin slices and leaving it to dry in the air or in the oven.

Tips & Tricks

After the ginger harvest, make sure that the harvested tubers are processed as soon as possible. Whole tubers sometimes lose flavor with dehydration in the air or tend to form mold in the presence of moisture. Storage is possible by freezing or by controlled drying in slices.