About 12 months ago I was given a small pot with a sickly-looking yellow leaf in it and asked if I could “make it well again”. The label said ‘turmeric’ and I’d always wanted to have a go at growing it, but had never been able to buy rhizomes locally. Green Harvest in Queensland does sell them but I hadn’t ordered any to try because I figured it probably wouldn’t be that easy to grow down south and didn’t want to waste the money.
But here was an opportunity to have a go and the donor had said she didn’t really want it back again.
So I potted it into a slightly larger pot and consulted Mr Google. As I thought, it seemed as though the plant wasn’t dying, but just entering winter dormancy. I left it in the polyhouse, just keeping it moist, and sure enough, in spring a little green shoot appeared. I fed it with Dynamic Lifter, watered it regularly and eventually potted it into a larger pot. This is how it looked at the end of summer :
As the weather cooled, the leaves started to yellow. I cut back on watering :
More and more :
Finally, the moment of truth had come. Time to tip it out of the pot and see if there were any rhizomes.
Yay! :
The clump split easily into two. I’ve replanted the group of larger rhizomes on the left and separated the smaller ones on the right. I was surprised to see the little tubers growing at the end of the thick roots, just like they do for potatoes. I had thought that the main rhizome multiplied by just elongating and branching, so I’ve stored these little tubers in moist cocopeat until I can get around to planting them individually into smaller pots. I hope they will form the basis of new plants, but will probably take some time to grow big enough to harvest.
The tubers I took inside to use were only small….. a couple the size of my little finger. I didn’t even bother to take a photo. I decided to try drying them, so chopped them in the Thermomix and put them in the dryer. They were yellow when I put them in but they’ve gone brown :
Maybe that’s an enzymatic reaction, same as when chopped apples and potatoes go brown. I hope it hasn’t altered the nutritional qualities. Looks like I can add another foodstuff to my self-sufficiency repertoire…..and a healthy one at that.
July 22, 2016 at 11:44 am |
I can’t add anything to that but to say ‘Well done’.
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July 23, 2016 at 10:39 am |
That’s fantastic.
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July 23, 2016 at 12:14 pm |
Thanks. I was pretty chuffed myself 🙂
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July 24, 2016 at 5:16 am |
Kudos Bev! My turmeric looks a whole lot different to that and is bright orange. The leaves are the same though. I will be replanting all of mine as I want to get a decent amount of turmeric growing here for future use. Cheers for the share. I am saving this blog post.
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July 26, 2016 at 8:56 am |
I’ve seen photos of turmeric that was bright orange even though mine was yellow. Maybe there are different varieties or maybe it’s the nutrients in the soils it’s grown in….who knows. The powdered stuff you buy is always yellow….maybe if it’s orange it changes colour after drying. Mine went brownish…..LOL!
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July 26, 2016 at 5:22 pm |
I got sent mine from Queensland and they told me that there are two kinds, regular and “red” and I got some of the red stuff so I am guessing that’s why mine is orange. If I can get it growing like mad I will send you some if you like 🙂
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July 26, 2016 at 6:04 pm |
Ah, so there are different sorts! Yes, would love to have some if you get it growing successfully and I can send you some of my yellow one. Cheers!
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July 27, 2016 at 3:37 am |
Nothing like communal swapsies Bev to share the love around 🙂
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July 26, 2016 at 10:07 pm |
I love rescuing plants. It reminds me life is a struggle at times, but there’s also rejuvenation to put stock in. Your specimen looks really healthy, and has even moved on to processing. Which reminds me to harvest my own tumeric too. 🙂
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July 27, 2016 at 3:59 pm |
Let’s know how it goes…..on your blog maybe?
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July 30, 2016 at 8:41 pm |
I found some reference here to turmeric turning brown and thought you might find it interesting
http://tastybite.com/m/single.php?post_name=five-things-you-didnt-know-about-turmeric
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July 31, 2016 at 8:55 am |
Thanks Jane, that was a fantastic site. So much about turmeric I didn’t know. I’ll link to it in a future post.
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August 6, 2016 at 9:02 pm |
My Permie friend gave me a decent pot of Tumeric today. He also gave me a root bound cardamom plant too. Looks similar to a ginger plant. Apparently it is hard to get them to flower down here, although at least they stay green over winter. He uses the leaves instead of the pods to flavour food like lining cake tins and wrapping fish etc. Hoping to find a micro cllimate that lets it flower in my garden.
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August 8, 2016 at 12:17 pm |
Hi Dean, let’s know how it goes. Don’t know anything about cardamon, although I think I’ve used the pods.
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