Florida Gardening: Anyone else growing grocery store ginger?, 1 by JaxFlaGardener

JaxFlaGardener wrote:
Last year, I planted some of the fresh ginger spice roots sold in grocery stores. I just wanted to see what might grow from them. The plants have returned this year, surviving winter temps as low as about 28 F on a few nights this winter. I covered all my gingers with about 3 inches of hay as winter mulch to help keep them from freezing.

The plant that grew from the grocery store ginger is only about 18 inches high and not very dramatic in its thin stems and foliage. I haven't gotten any blooms out of it yet, but it only just emerged from dormancy about 3 weeks ago, so maybe it still has time to bloom this growing season.

Here is the plant files link for Zingiber officianale (the ginger spice plant that should grow from the grocery store ginger roots):

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/55488/index.html

Some of the roots I planted were ginger I bought for cooking, but the rhizomes began to mold before I ate it all, so into the ginger patch it went! I bought some of the others from the grocery store just because they looked really fresh with lots of buds. I planted those immediately without cutting into them for cooking.

I would be interested in knowing if anyone else has tried growing the grocery store ginger, and especially would enjoy seeing any photos you got if the ginger bloomed for you. It is a cheap way to get new and different ginger plants -- just buy the fresh spice ginger rhizomes by the pound from the produce section!

Jeremy