It's called Zingiber Officinale. I've never grown it, but I do grow almost 50 different gingers including several Zingibers. As with most all Zingibers it blooms from the base. Did yours bloom last year?

Steve

No Steve, they got fried. I had them in the full San Antonio sun, and with my work schedule, I'm often away for up to five days. So the plants have to fend for themselves.

So the Ginger got too much sun, and I could see that the plants, though they were alive, were stunted and just barely hanging on.

I guess you learn as you go. In this case, since it was an unkown and aquired so cheaply, I should have thrown a couple rhyzomes in the shade and part shade, to help make a better determination of what the plant likes.

But thanks for the ID, I got more info now on the internet. Seems are is they are rather reticent to flower. So that may be an interesting plant project for me, along with all my other ones.

I'm growing a lot of canna this year. 8 differant varietes. So maybe next spring, I can trade some ryzomes for things like heliconia, or ginger that might put on a better display.

Thanks again!

I would rank gingers way up the pole. You could grow 50 different gingers in San Antonio. You're just a little cooler in the winter than I am on the Louisiana Gulf Coast but there are plenty of hedychium, curcuma, globba, kaempferia, zingiber, and costus gingers you could grow in Zone 8. Heliconia on the other hand would have to be container grown as there is only one heliconia that might make it in the ground in your zone and you would probably never see it bloom as it blooms on second year growth. A good freeze would kill the above ground growth, but the rhizome would remain viable. It's not a bad looking plant though; Heliconia Scheideana.

Steve

Hi Mike,

The ginger that they sell at HEB is the edible type. I've grown it before, and recommend that if you want good rhizomes, you purchase them fresh from an Asian market. In San Antonio there's Tim's and another Asian store on Bandera and Wurzbach across from Ancira Car Dealer. They are much cheaper.

Back to gingers, it grows really really well in partial shade, but will bloom in more sun. In the winter, it dies back. You can harvest them then but if you're not going to eat it, just cut down the stalks and mulch it and it will come back next year. If you are going to harvest some of it, make sure the pieces that you are going to put back in the ground are dusted with sulfur so that the root doesn't rot.

In the summer I recommend that you come to the Botanical Gardens to see the hundreds of different varieties in bloom that were hybridized by Dr. Ying Doon Moy (also of Moy Grande Hibiscus). It's absolutely amazing. Good luck.

I planted some from H E B wonderful white and smells GOOD

Thanks everyone for the info. "Cest" a trip to the botanical gardens is definately in my future.

Allen, sounds like you got your ginger to bloom. Nicely done. But speaking of good smells, this year I filled all the pots on my deck with petunias. I had no idea they smelled so good. I always thought that they were showey, pointless annuals. But these guys put out a very good aroma. I thought it must be the gardenias, but they aren't even in bloom.

I can't thing of any annual that smells so good.