Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Flowering in October 2011, 1 by cestrum_SEQ

cestrum_SEQ wrote:
Here it is when it was in flower in November in a previous year. It tastes more pungent than ginger, stronger. It is also used for medicinal purposes (to give vitality/energy; ginger is supposed to have a calmative rather than energising effect. Mind you, I haven't noticed any burst of energy after eating galangal.). But the soil is so hard here that the only time I've used it is when I've run out of shop-bought ginger. Even then, I've only been able to dig out maybe a cm or two of the rhizome and have ended up using the bottom of the stalk (usually to flavour soup rather than to grate it and eat it as I would with the actual rhizome). The bed is surrounded by plants (some pots were moved away before the pruning began, so it's normally more crowded than shown in that photo), including brug seedlings, which makes the attempted digging so much harder. The flowers are aromatic rather than perfumed, and I like the smell but it wouldn't be to everybody's liking. (Oddly, I do find their smell invigorating.)
I've also grown ginger from supermarket-bought rhizomes but couldn't be bothered watering it (it was during the drought) to keep growing it.

This message was edited Oct 15, 2011 2:40 PM