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Herbs and spices in a tiny garden

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Ginger and turmeric tubers

Having just moved into a townhouse with a tiny yard, I am reduced to growing my ginger and turmeric in pots. I’m still impressed by how productive my plants have been.

This year’s crop, roughly cleaned. The remnants of last year’s dried and powdered crop is in the jars.

This year’s crop included a yellow and an orange turmeric and classic ginger. The yellow turmeric is really high in curcumin, the orange one is great for adding colour to curries. They are both very tasty, especially fresh.

I will divide the crop into grow, eat and powder. With a larger crop I would keep what I wanted to eat fresh and enough to grow next year’s crop and powder the rest. With a tiny crop like this, I just divide it in three and accept the results. The main thing is that I leave enough to grow a bigger crop next year. Two large and two smaller tubers of each variety will give me about this much crop again next year.

The ones put aside for growing will go into a paper bag in the cupboard with my seeds collection. (The pawpaw seeds on the paper towel are being dried for use as pepper). I will check them in spring to watch out for the first signs of sprouting.

The ones for eating fresh will be split between the onion and potato bag in the pantry for those I will eat in one month, and a plastic bag in the fridge that will last a little longer.

The ones for powdering will be broken into single sausages, scrubbed really clean, sliced and sun dried, then put in a low oven until crisp. They are then ground into a powder in an electric coffee grinder. I don’t peel them, which means my powder is a little coarse, but with small amounts like this, peeling them throws away too much raw material.

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