Ginger
Zingiber officinale
Zingiberaceae
Maritime Southeast Asia / southern China; cultivated in India for well over two thousand years, with Kerala and the North-East the main growers today
1.0000° N, 110.0000° E · Maritime Southeast Asia
24.0000° N, 110.0000° E · Southern China
10.5000° N, 76.5000° E · Kerala, India
A perennial herb grown as an annual, about a metre tall, with reed-like leafy shoots rising from a knobbly underground stem — the rhizome — which is the part we eat. Fresh ginger (allam) is juicy, sharp and lemony; dried ginger (sonti) is hotter and more warming. Ginger does not set seed in cultivation; every plant is grown from a piece of rhizome.
How it grows
Ginger wants warmth, shade for part of the day, and loose, rich, well-drained soil — it rots in heavy clay. It is planted in April–May before the monsoon as 25–50 g rhizome pieces with two or three buds, 20–25 cm apart in raised beds, and mulched heavily with dry leaves, which farmers in Kerala renew three times in the season. The crop takes 8–9 months; the leaves yellow and dry in December–January when the rhizome is mature. Young ginger can be pulled at five to six months for pickles.
Grow at home
1. Take a plump piece of kitchen ginger with visible buds ("eyes"). Soak overnight.
2. Plant it 5 cm deep, buds up, in a wide pot (30 cm or more) of loose compost-rich soil. Bright shade, not full sun.
3. Keep the soil moist, never wet. Shoots take three to four weeks.
4. Mulch with dry leaves once the shoots are a hand high.
5. Harvest young ginger at six months by pulling the whole clump, or wait for the leaves to die back at nine months for mature ginger. Replant a piece.
Harvest
When the leaves yellow and fall, lift the clumps with a fork, shake off the soil, and cut the shoots. For fresh use, wash and keep in a cool place; it lasts two to three weeks. For dried ginger (sonti), the traditional method is to soak the rhizome overnight, scrape the skin, and sun-dry for a week to ten days until it snaps. Set aside the healthiest pieces as seed for next year and store them in dry sand.
Lore
Ginger is in every Telugu kitchen twice: fresh allam in pachadi, pesarattu and tea; dried sonti in the postpartum kitchen and the winter medicine cupboard. Grandmothers give sonti with jaggery for a cold and allam-tea for a heavy stomach. The Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India lists both Ardraka (fresh) and Sunthi (dried) as separate drugs; Charaka calls ginger "vishvabheshaja", the universal medicine. Allam pachadi with pesarattu is not tradition-as-medicine; it is just the right thing to eat.