Months of hot, humid weather make our summer a challenge for many plants in our gardens. A wonderful group of plants called gingers thrive in the heat, however, and delight us with bold foliage and attractive flowers.
Native to tropical or semi-tropical regions, gingers flourish in the heat, rain and humidity of Louisiana summers.
After the severe freezes of last January, you may be leery of adding tropical plants to your landscape. Despite their tropical origins, many gingers are cold hardy here and make excellent, permanent additions to the landscape.
Low-growing gingers, like Kaempferia pulchra, make great ground covers or clumps at the front of shady borders.
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Gingers produce thick, fleshy stems that grow at or just below the soil. With a good, thick mulch of leaves or pine straw, these rhizomes are easily protected during the winter. If the shoots growing from the rhizomes are killed by hard freezes, the rhizomes will resprout and send up new shoots in the spring.
Midsummer is an excellent time to add tropical plants like gingers to the landscape. They establish in the garden very nicely despite the torrid heat of July.
An advantage of planting gingers now is that they will have more time to settle in before their first winter in the ground. A well-established ginger is more resilient during winter freezes than one more recently planted.
The plants we call gingers include many genera with many different sizes, growth habits and flower shapes.
Low-growing gingers, like Kaempferia pulchra and smaller species of Curcuma or Globba, make great ground covers or clumps at the front of shady borders. Medium-sized gingers 3 to 6 feet tall include species of Curcuma, Hedychium and Costus, while the shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) grows 10 to 12 feet tall. Larger gingers are excellent choices for accents, screens or at the back of a border.
Gardeners who are working with shady areas will find a gold mine of shade-tolerant plants among the gingers. In their natural habitats, most gingers grow under the canopies of trees in filtered light, although some grow in the open at the edge of water and in sunnier conditions.
Most gingers will do best where they receive direct sun for about two to four hours a day, and should not be planted in hot, sunny, dry locations.
Most gingers bloom on new growth. Any shoots that bloomed last summer should be cut to the ground.
PHOTO BY R. STEPHANIE BRUNO
Gingers thrive in moist, fertile soils rich in organic matter. When planting gingers into the landscape, choose a location with appropriate light and generously amend the soil with compost or composted manure.
A 2- to 4-inch layer dug into the upper 8 inches of soil would be fine. The addition of fertilizer will also help create the nutrient-rich conditions in which gingers thrive. Sprinkle a general-purpose fertilizer following label directions over the area and incorporate it along with the organic matter into the bed before planting.
Under favorable growing conditions, many gingers grow vigorously and form clumps that should be periodically dug and divided. This keeps gingers from spreading into areas where they are not wanted and prevents the clumps from getting too large.
This is best done in late March or early April, although many gardeners successfully divide gingers through the summer. Depending on how fast the plant grows and the amount of space allotted to it, dividing and replanting is generally done every two or three years.
Gingers such as curcuma, globba and kaempferia are completely dormant in the winter. Their foliage turns yellow and brown in the fall, and the plants should be cut back at that time. Mark the spot where they are growing lest you forget and accidentally dig into them.
They will sprout again in the spring and bloom during the summer. Keep them well mulched over the winter.
Shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) grows 10 to 12 feet tall and is a good choice as an accent, screen or at the back of a border.
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Other gingers are evergreen. Most gingers in this group, such as butterfly ginger (Hedychium) and spiral ginger (Costus), bloom on new shoots that grow in spring and summer.
Once individual shoots have bloomed, they may be cut back to the ground as they will not bloom again. These gingers may be cut back to the ground if frozen back in winter much as you would cannas.
Shell ginger is also evergreen, but it blooms only on the previous year’s growth. Stalks that grew the summer before should not be cut back unless killed by winter freezes. Once individual shoots have bloomed, they may be cut back to the ground as they will not bloom again.
The variegated shell ginger is shorter-growing than the standard species, reaching 4 to 6 feet. The green foliage with brilliant yellow streaks is truly eye-catching and has made this one of the most popular gingers today.
People often wonder about the edibility of garden gingers, as several types of gingers are used to flavor foods. Do not consume ornamental gingers, however.
Edible ginger, Zingiber officinale, is easy to grow here, too.
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You can grow common edible ginger, Zingiber officinale, the same way we grow other types. The rhizomes have the flavor we are looking for when a recipe calls for ginger. Rhizomes purchased at the supermarket as fresh ginger can be planted just below the soil surface of a shady, well-prepared bed and will grow here.
To see an outstanding collection of gingers, pay a visit to the New Orleans Botanical Garden in City Park.
You can also view images and find more detailed information on particular gingers on the internet, along with mail order sources. And be sure to check out nurseries, which are beginning to carry more different types of gingers.