The Self-Sufficient Kitchen: How To Regrow Ginger At Home

Regrowing produce is a fun way to save money, flex your self-sufficiency skills, and learn more about the incredible plants that feed us. In their new book Regrown, U.K.-based authors Paul Anderton and Robin Daly chronicle their entertaining journey trying to cultivate dozens of fruits and veggies, herbs and fungi, in their home kitchens, to varying degrees of success. It turns out that ginger is one kitchen staple that was surprisingly easy for them to cultivate.

Over the course of their kitchen botany experiments, Anderton and Daly had the best results when they started with a piece of organic ginger. "Always buy organic ginger because you're going to be pretty confident that it hasn't been treated in any way to stop its sprouting," he tells mbg.

Before you put your cuttings in the ground, Anderton says you'll want to let a callus form around the newly exposed part of ginger flesh. "There's a danger that the area that's been torn gets infected when it goes in the ground," he explains, likening it to putting a cut finger into soil (ouch).

You can plant your cuttings in individual pots, but it will be easier to put them all in there together. Grab a pot that has enough room to place your cuttings 4 inches apart from one another. Fill it almost to the top with well-draining houseplant potting soil (your pot should have a drainage hole for water to escape) and then plop in your cuttings so their eyes are facing up toward the sky. Top them off with another 2 inches of soil, and give everything a good watering. Your ginger has landed!

If you have a yard, you can also plant your cuttings straight into the ground. But keep in mind that those who live in USDA Plant Hardiness zone 7 or below will need to carry their plants indoors for the winter once the first frost hits. Ginger is a tropical plant that needs a fair amount of heat and humidity to thrive.

After two to three weeks, you should notice a little green shoot creeping up from your soil. As time goes on, it will continue to grow toward the sky until you have a tall, thin stem that Anderton says resembles a bamboo plant. This is also edible!

Anderton took his first ginger harvest within a matter of six months, but usually, the longer you leave your plant in the ground, the more it will grow and its flavor will develop.

Anderton has found that winter, when the plant begins to "die down" and go dormant, is a great time to carefully dig it out of the ground and try it out. Once the plant stops expending its energy on new growth above ground, he says, flavor gets stored in its underbelly, leading to more of that signature spiciness.