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Post by castanea on Mar 4, 2012 11:18:48 GMT -5
I tried growing it many years ago with not much luck. The problem seems to be that it does not like cool temperatures at all. Which means it does not like cool nights. Although I'm in zone 9, we get lots of cool nights through the course of the spring summer and fall. The problem is that it simply quits growing when it gets cool. It may even go dromant if you have too many cool nights in a row. The other big problem is that it apparently takes at least 6-8 months of continually warm days and nights to produce new tuberous growth. I think south Florida may be the only place where it can be reliably grown in the continental US. Ginger is much easier to grow.
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Post by castanea on Mar 4, 2012 11:30:24 GMT -5
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Post by atash on Mar 4, 2012 13:19:10 GMT -5
Go for it, Bud. It's not as common in cultivation in this country as other Curcumas, but it's been reported as successfully growing in many states. I've even grown Curcumas up here. Other Curcumas grow just fine in your part of the world including some that are seemingly more "tropical" than C. longa.
Castanea, I agree Curcumas are heat-loving. Wood-n-Stake has plenty of heat and his humidity is a higher than yours, making nights warmer there.
A couple factors might have been working against you. One is the cool nights as you've already noted, a function of your low humidity. Another is that Curcumas actually have a natural dormancy despite being tropical (and in a few cases subtropical such as C. elata from the sub-Himalaya) that corresponds to the monsoonal winter, which is cool (not severely cold, but overnight radiation frosts are actually possible as far south as at least central India, amazingly--actually even further south up in the mountains) and dryish.
They don't like rainy winters, so that's one strike against both of us as compared to Wood-N-Stake. I know some parts of the south see fall and winter rain but not like we do weeks at a time.
Something else that goes wrong for us is that they need a pattern of cool/dryish, then hot to wake up. Monsoonal spring is hot and dry; they need some heat to tell them that spring is here and it's time to get ready for the rainy monsoonal summer, which is when they're going to actively grow. They don't come up immediately in the spring, even if spring is quite warm; they come up fairly late, typically around June. Summer is actually a little cooler than spring in that part of the world, due to the frequent cloud cover. Sort of like parts of tropical America. Climates where there is a gradual transition between seasons are hard on them, because they don't get enough of the cues that it's time to break dormancy.
A lot of quite deep-tropical gingers (I'm referring here to all of Zingiberaceae collectively) are surprisingly rhizome-hardy in the southeastern USA. The seasonal pattern is close enough to their conditions back home to trigger and break dormancy.
One problem with culinary gingers for all of us is that they tend to have been vegetatively propagated too many times; they're full of viruses. These compromise their vigor. On the rare occasions they bloom anymore, it would be great if someone would raise some seed and grow that out. If you've ever grown species that have not been in cultivation so long, or better yet grown out seedlings (I have), you know the whole family tends to be astonishingly vigorous. You start with a seedling, each shoot is quite a bit bigger than the last, then when you're not paying attention they wreck their pots. They regularly rip plastic pots apart--a rhizome will shoot out a drainage hole and rip the pot to pieces--or for that matter they shatter clay pots as the rhizomes swell up.
I've got a collection of the cooler-growing types like Hedychiums, Cautleyas, and Roscoas, plus Zingiber myoga (another one that has gone sterile from being virus-laden) and one of the hardier Boesenbergias. I've grown Costus in the past, and might try Curcuma elata some day.
Kaempferias will grow here in summer, but I don't think we can get them through our cool wet winters. However they do fine in the southeastern USA.
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Post by raymondo on Mar 4, 2012 15:37:58 GMT -5
I've grown it in pots here. Summer nights are often around 55°F. I grow it out of direct sunlight and it seems to do reasonably well. Now if only ginger would be as well-behaved!
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Post by templeton on Mar 4, 2012 16:13:37 GMT -5
I've got it to grow here in Bendigo - this is it in a big pot in my greenhouse next to lemongrass. It seems to be setting more rhizomes than i planted when i excavate the top of the pot. I just bought some fesh rhizomes from the organic store in town last spring, into a pot, and away they went. This is my first season growing it, so I can't give lots of info. Lots of asian food stores in Melbourne have fresh rhizomes for sale. Atash, thanks for that info, most informative. Attachments:
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 4, 2012 21:31:18 GMT -5
I am going for it. That looks quite like canna lily, and they are used in the interstate medians. Grow like weeds actually. Does tumeric need direct sun or better with shade part of the day. It goes from cool to hot really quick here, with moderate humidity, 65-80%, warm nights. Have a spot picked for taro, celeric ,near the A/C condesate discharge, mixed with ginger. Tea trees in the sheltered south facing corner side. Taro/ elephant ear is crazy expensive $8-10 each. Thinking of going to the Asian markets, hoping its has not been super chilled or treated. Can buy taro in bulk online but will wait until warmer to hope it arrives alive. Same with the tumeric, need to go to one of the Asian Super Markets for red rice, and check for some these. Lucky to have multiple Asian Markets here. Wonder if the red rice would sprout?  should; the black (aka "forbidden" ) does. |
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Post by raymondo on Mar 5, 2012 6:03:36 GMT -5
Does tumeric need direct sun or better with shade part of the day. It's an understory plant so not direct sun is better. |
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