Garden: Ginger

Ginger is another plant that grows here without my intervention. It isn’t true “Accidental Gardening” (which is what i call the self-seeding of various edible plants in my garden, like verdolaga or cherry tomatoes) because i planted it intentionally after a piece of ginger i had bought to cook with had sprouted roots. I had enough for 4 different clumps of roots that were planted in pots for awhile, then moved over to a spot on our property.

I have never dug up the roots of ginger to use, and probably wouldn’t have thought to do it now, but I wanted to make a recipe for Sweet and Savory Asian Chicken Drumsticks that just wouldn’t wait, and I had run out of fresh ginger, which seemed like a critical ingredient. I was thinking of using dry … and browsing through some google articles about ginger when i remembered that i actually have some ginger plants growing in the back yard.

I went out with a giant spoon and started to gently pull away the soil from the base of the plant.

Sure enough, there was ginger under there!!

I used the edge of the spoon to just slice through the tender juicy root taking off just enough for the recipe. I want to plant some more plants now … I use a lot of ginger and i would like to be able to use as much as possible from my own garden.

This was the beautiful tender aromatic and perfect piece of ginger that i harvested for the recipe.