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Ginger

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BajaJohn:
I've had success getting store-bought ginger to sprout and grow but I don't seem to have hit upon good growing conditions. The leaves seem to turn brown and dry up regardless of the amount of water I provide. Many rhizomes just dissolve in the dirt. The best I have done is in dappled shade where I got small new rhizomes that seem to be sprouting for the second year. The bigger plants in the photo are from bigger rhizomes that have produced bigger plants but the shoots still look sickly. The soil is sandy with lots of compost and irrigated from a drip system. Any suggestions to improve my plants?

Zafra:
Ginger is an understory plant that likes shade, moisture, and a lot of organic material. Tough, but not impossible, to do in the desert.

LivingParadise:
Wow, they look unhappy. Are you using municipal tap water? Could be that they don't like that - most of my plants hate mine, which has a high PH. They're so much happier with natural rain. The other possibility is the air is not humid enough for them?

BajaJohn:
Thanks for the feedback. I suspect the humidity may be the big issue - only 30% today. Maybe mist irrigation rather than drip would help. I can also try them in a very shady corner that gets no direct sun and seems to retain moisture more than the rest of the garden.
Would pure compost be a good growing medium for them? That would help my worm project too.
Yes, I use municipal water and no other plants seem to have an issue. The pH is neutral. Rain isn't really an option here since it only appears on one or two days per year at most. I could try purified (RO) water that I can get for about a dime a gallon.
Once again, thanks for the help. This is a new and very different environment from the English gardens I grew up in. I suspect shady spots here get more light than full sun locations in cloudy England.

DimplesLee:
Please mix in a lot of wood ash to the compost - also they like a thorough watering once in a while - when the leaves start wilting - otherwise as long as they are in deep shade (grow mine in containers under trees) they stay quite happy. if they rot or grow mushy they are probably getting too much water actually. People in the Philippines plant them in hillsides as intercrops in orchards and leave them alone for six to eight months (no supplemental irrigation or anything) and they do just fine.

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