Week of January 20

A special opportunity in our Florida garden is the chance to grow gingers.  Ginger is a huge family of plants that grow in warm climates.  We now have ten or so kinds of ginger, growing in the shady parts of our garden under the live oak canopy.  They emerge late in the spring and die back in the winter, always changing the landscape.  They are amazingly diverse, ranging from small peacock gingers under the Chickasaw plum trees, to the huge pine cone gingers with large red “cones” that exude a kind of juice that can be used for soap!  Many have complex and fragrant flowers.  Of course, the other use of ginger is as a spice and condiment for sushi, drinks, and cooking.  We have a patches of Thai ginger and kitchen ginger, from which we harvested fat ginger root.