How to Grow Ginger? The Latest Planting Techniques and Methods Tutorial
Ginger is the fresh rhizome of the Zingiberaceae perennial herbaceous plant ginger, with aliases including ginger root, bailayun, gouzhuangzhi, yindixin, yanliangxiaozi, fresh ginger, and honey-roasted ginger. The rhizome (dried ginger), cork layer (ginger skin), and leaves (ginger leaves) can all be used as medicine. In traditional Chinese medicine, ginger has effects such as dispersing, stopping vomiting, and relieving cough.
Ginger's Growing Environment
Ginger originated in the tropical regions of Southeast Asia and prefers a warm, humid climate. Its cold tolerance and drought resistance are relatively weak, and the plant can only grow during the frost-free period. The most suitable temperature for growth is 25-28°C; when the temperature is below 20°C, sprouting is slow; when exposed to frost, the plant will wither, and after frost damage the rhizome completely loses its ability to sprout. In most counties of the main production area in Guangxi, the annual average temperature is 18-19°C, the average July temperature is 25.3°C, and the extreme high temperature is 39°C; the average January temperature is 10.2°C, and the extreme low temperature is -4°C; the annual frost-free period is more than 330 days. The annual rainfall is 900-1300 mm, and the relative air humidity is about 80%.
Ginger's roots are not well developed, few in number and short, distributed vertically mainly within 30 cm of soil, with a lateral expansion radius of 30 cm. After the seed ginger sprouts, the first shoot formed is called the main stem; afterward, primary branches, secondary branches, and tertiary branches form successively on both sides of the main stem. Ginger lateral branches often grow symmetrically. Ginger is a vegetatively propagated vegetable crop, and its entire growth process is basically a process of vegetative growth, which can be divided into: germination stage, seedling stage, vigorous growth stage, dormancy stage, etc. Ginger likes warmth and cannot tolerate cold or drought. It grows above 16°C, and the young buds can begin to move, but under conditions below 20°C sprouting is slow. The suitable temperature for fine bud germination is 22-25°C. The suitable temperature for stem and leaf growth is 20-28°C.
Preparation Before Planting
1. Finely prepare the land and apply enough base fertilizer. Choose a plot with fertile soil and good irrigation conditions, and carry out fine land preparation in early April. Along with land preparation, spread 4 cubic meters of high-quality decomposed chicken manure or 10,000 kg of high-quality barnyard manure as base fertilizer. In high-fertility and high-water plots, open furrows at a row spacing of 60——65 cm for sowing, and apply 100 kg of soybean cake, 50 kg of ternary compound fertilizer, 50 kg of potassium sulfate, 2 kg of zinc fertilizer, and 1 kg of boron fertilizer in the furrows as seed fertilizer.
2. Carefully select ginger seeds and cultivate strong buds. About 30 days before sowing, take out the ginger seeds, remove the soil from the ginger pieces, and select healthy ginger pieces that are plump, full, bright in skin color, not shriveled, not rotten, not frost-damaged, and free of diseases and pests as seeds. Each individual seed ginger piece is required to weigh more than 60 grams, and generally 500 kg of seed ginger is used per mu.
3. Sun the ginger and rest the ginger. In early March, choose a sunny day, around eight or nine in the morning, place the carefully selected ginger seeds on sunny ground to dry, and at night bring them indoors and cover them with straw curtains to promote the decomposition of nutrients in the ginger pieces. Sun the ginger for 3——4 days and rest the seeds for 10 days, keeping the temperature at 13——15°C to promote nutrient decomposition and bud differentiation.
4. Soak the seeds and promote sprouting. For the carefully selected and sun-dried ginger seeds, use 200-fold dilutions of pesticides such as Jiangwensan, Shengjiangbao, and Luba for seed soaking, generally for 10 minutes, which can play a sterilizing and disinfecting role. After soaking, dry them and promote sprouting. Put the ginger pieces in a basket and promote sprouting in a shed or hotbed, etc., maintaining air humidity at 75——85% and temperature at 25°C. After 20 days, when the ginger buds have grown to 0.5 cm, sow in batches according to bud size.
Sowing and Seedling Stage Management
1. Cover with film and sow early. Sow on April 15. Before covering with film, spray 150 grams per mu of a special herbicide diluted with water to clear weeds under the film. For the plastic film, choose film with a thickness of 0.005——0.006 mm and a width of 120 mm.
2. Plant sparsely and enlarge the ginger pieces. The suitable planting density for high-yield plots is 7,000 plants/mu, with a row spacing of 50-55 cm and a plant spacing of 25 cm. The seeding rate is generally about 500 kg per mu.
3. Shade and promote growth. When more than 50% of the ginger has emerged, shade the ginger field in time to promote robust growth of the ginger seedlings. The specific method is as follows: make the shade net into strip form and pull it between the ginger rows, fixing both ends with bamboo poles, with a width of 60——65 cm; a shade net with a shading rate of 40% can be selected.