Grocer to Garden - Lemongrass, Ginger, and Taro (part 4)

The Graduating Class of 2008

Bamboo bistro - Holiday Special

Grocer to Garden - Lemongrass, Ginger, and Taro (part 3)

Grocer to Garden is a running experiment, taking produce from the grocery store and testing out techniques to propagate them into plants. The first candidates are lemongrass, ginger, and taro.  This is the third update, you can see the rest of the story here.  Commentary to follow, here are the pics.

Lemongrass

Ginger

OK, so it was 20 days under soil, but that's some nice growth.

Taro

Hassah!  Looks like the more submerged corm has taken a big lead.  The other bud which revealed in our last update hasn't grown much, but much more lies beneath the surface...

Bamboo bistro

 

I'll have what she's having...

Was inspired by the seating at Bryant Park, in New York City, and found a great picture in this blog, here.

Grocer to Garden - Lemongrass, Ginger, and Taro (Part 2)

Grocer to Garden is a running experiment, taking produce from the grocery store and testing out techniques to propagate them into plants. The first candidates are lemongrass, ginger, and taro. One week later, here's the first update. For those of you catching up, the original post is here.

Lemongrass
Some new roots have formed, and I am pretty sure that two of them were not there this afternoon. One commentary I read said that you should peel some of the outer layers off of the stalk before dropping them in water. I might try that next time to compare results. Maybe a side by side test? Either way, the results are encouraging enough.


You can click on the pictures to get a closer view

Taro
Little green tips are popping out of the taro corms, and there seems to be more just below the surface ready to pop out. Some gardeners recommend a bit more of the corm sitting above the surface, so that would be a neat variation to test out. So far, this too seems to be going well, and I am thinking about picking up a few more corms the next time I go food shopping.


Both


Left


Right

Ginger
Nothing to report here. For this one, I've been referring to Pam Peirce's Golden Gate Gardening, so I'm following her recommendation here to wait two weeks to gauge the progress.

"Dig them up and check them in two weeks to see if buds are beginning to form. If not, just wash the rhizomes, dry them, and set them aside to eat- some ginger rhizomes just won't grow- and try rhizomes from another source."

So one week down, one to go. Go rhizomes! I'm a bit worried about the ginger not being moist enough the last two days. But on a positive note, it never dried out or was too soggy.

That's all for now, stay tuned as we'll revisit this next week, when we dig up the ginger and track the progress of the whole project.

I've found Golden Gate Gardening to be a fine resource to cross-reference in my recent research efforts. You can sneak a peak in the book here, and CRFG has reviewed the book, which you can find here. If you have any ideas or feedback, be sure to post a comment.

Grocer to Garden - Lemongrass, Ginger, and Taro

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A little experiment brewing here. I purchased two taro root corms, one large-ish piece of organic ginger and two stalks of organic lemongrass from the local grocery store. Here's what I did so far...

Lemongrass
Requires - one clean apple cider jar, a rubber band, two sticks, and water. Bound the two stalks with a rubber band (not too tight) and used two sticks to suspend the bunch in the water.


Ginger & Taro
Requires - 2 terracotta bulb pots (10-inch), some potting mix, some water. Two 3 inch pieces of Ginger layed horizontally 2-3 inches below the soil. Two taro balls placed vertically, partially buried, with a little bit peeking above ground. Just add water.


Ginger (not much to see here)


Taro, take a closer look at the two little taro roots popping out of the ground.

Check out this nifty collection of Vegetables from the Undeground, including taro. Those folks at University of Queensland - Australia sure do their homework. And this bunch of lemongrass went from the Grocer to Garden at "Happy Forest Farm", yay. Of course, if you've been following along, then you probably noticed that these are all possible components in the Compost Factory Guild.

Aphelocoma californica

California Jay Bird



California Jay Bird, California Scrub Jay, Western Scrub Jay

Name: Aphelocoma californica
Family: CORVIDAE
Order: PASSERIFORMES

Where: Atop the fence along the western wall, in the neighbor's trees. (0,40)*

The species formerly known as "Scrub Jay" has been broken into three separate species: The Florida Scrub-Jay, the Island Scrub-Jay, and the Western Scrub-Jay. The Western Scrub-Jay can be divided into three forms, each of which may or may not be a separate species. The California Scrub-Jay of the Pacific coast has contrasting dark blue-and-white plumage, with a prominent blue necklace on a streaked white throat. The Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay of the Great Basin and eastward is duller and less well-marked, with little or no necklace. Sumichrast's Scrub-Jay of central Mexico has whiter underparts and little or no necklace.

The Western Scrub-Jay has been used in laboratory studies of its ability to hide (cache) and remember seeds. Jays that had stolen the caches of other jays noticed if other jays were watching them hide food. If they had been observed, they would dig up and hide their food again. Jays that had never stolen food did not pay any attention to whether other jays were watching them hide their food.

Fun facts from the good people at Cornell. You can find the rest of the story here.