how to harvest ginger without harvesting the whole ginger plant?

Question

Here is my 4 months old ginger plant, it's doing rather well, from what I learn from google, ginger took about a year before it can be harvest, so there is still a long way to go before I can touch it..

however from what I see how to plant grows, it kinda make me wonder, how am I going to harvest ginger without taking the whole plant out. that is pretty much the goal of planting this ginger, I don't use much ginger in cooking, but I heard someone mention that I could just grow my own ginger and pluck a piece whenever I need it.. but I'm not sure how to do it since all ginger harvesting video just took the whole plant out.

so does anyone know how to just pluck a small piece of ginger from ginger plant?

thanks.

Answer 1

What you’re suggesting - harvesting during the growing season - isn’t ideal.

Ginger is best harvested once the leaves die down at the end of the growing season.

There are a number of reasons for this that I won’t go into here.

If you really want to try to harvest ginger now, you will need to either:

• dig down into the pot and cut or saw off a piece of the root (actually a rhizome) (follow one of the stems down into the soil until you find the rhizome); OR
• remove the entire plant from the pot and carefully tease out a section of rhizome, cut off the green growth / stem and leaves and then if necessary cut or saw off your selected piece of rhizome.

Answer 2

Couple of months ago planted my first ginger plant but ever since ive been having doubts about the harvest and recently read an article which cast light on that matter. The ideas is that

• you should not bury the whole rhizome under ground but rather leave it on the surface having just part of it in the soil

As I said I just read that in an article some time ago and am still due to try it out and get more insight into further details.

Expected result should look something like this