This post will be about harvesting a right side up and an upside down tumeric or ginger plant which has been going for the entire summer.
Trurmeric
I would normally let this go until I'm in need of ginger or turmeric so that I can cook with the fresh stuff come up but this one is in distress because it has been growing on a fairly high stand to make room for the lower leaves and it has fallen a few times and now the pot is broken.
Besides that, I may be starting a cabbage double potting. It would replace this one with cabbage growing on the top and cabbage growing out the bottom. We will see if that ever comes to fruition, but for now let's get into finding out how much turmeric and or ginger we have.
I did have a little bit of difficulty last year when I harvested because I couldn't tell which leaves were of the turmeric kind and which ones were of the ginger kind.
When I planted these I made sure to write on the side of the pot which locations were planted with ginger. I plant everyday in the spring and summer and I don't always mark where I put seeds, or in this case, root buds.
Above, there's a smaller plant which I won't be harvesting today. You can see it says ginger on the side. And if we look up top, you see what kind of leaves there are coming from that location. This gives me a clue as to what ginger leaves look like. It is also fairly obvious, below, that the root below it is ginger.
I have these others that are still growing. Some are even dark green, but cooler weather comes and they don not look so brilliant. It is likely that these are all turmeric.
Pay no attention to that hydroponic system to the left. That one is for another post.
This is the plant that's going to have our attention today because it's turning yellow and dying, probably due to the hole that opened up on the bottom of the pot after it fell a couple of months ago.
| Before it fell - my last post on this plant.
This was one of my upside-down experiments that was clearly working, but the metal support is not very steady and the wind blows it over sometimes.
It's bad enough when you have one or two holes in the bottom of the pot, which have stems growing out of them, but adding another hole simply lets everything drain out and the plant dries out.
So we're going to harvest this one today and get rid of the old pot. I'm not sure if I want to try to grow turmeric in another lifted pot like this, unless I can tie it off so it doesn't fall.
I will start by moving the metal support to the side and then take a look at the damage to the pot. Either way the plastic will end up in the recycle bin, but let's take a look and see if the up side down plants produced anything.
Once I wrestle the larger leaves out of the metal support stand, we can get started seeing what's under the ground on this plant.
I'm just getting started on the bottom side and it looks like there's a butt-load of turmeric poking through.
The pot may have cracked when the plant fell, but it looks like the ginger was pushing out through the cracks.
We are not even close to being done yet and one piece broke off. It is definitely turmeric. Confirmed with my taste buds.
The top and the bottom plant seem to be connected. You can see where the skewers go in. That is where they top and bottom plants became one plant. Wow.
It seems like they had grown individually until they got bigger and then they joined as the fruit became crowded. It was only one piece of turmeric that was being fed by both plants.
And here is the entire scene of the crime. What a mess, right? I am already scooping all the dirt back into my soil bucket.
It looks like it is a mountain of turmeric. Let me get you a better shot of the good stuff.
As we speak, I am putting the last spade full of dirt in the spare soil bucket. I also used some to add some depth to the smaller ginger plant we saw earlier. I would not wan to tempt animals to a life of crime.
Thanks for following along, I am doing what I can to keep you updated you on my recent posts. We are going into winter here but most everything still grows.
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