By Kymisha Montgomery
If you visited our veggie garden this summer and thought you’d stumbled into a tropical rainforest in the middle of Ohio, you weren’t hallucinating. In an act of pure climate defiance, we spent months attempting to grow ginger and turmeric right here in Cincinnati.
Spoiler alert: It worked!
Because these heavy-feeding superfoods demand tropical heat and we live in the Midwest, we had to cheat the system. Our amazing garden volunteer, Jill, bought plump rhizomes and tucked them into soil flats indoors, before it was warm enough for these crops outside. She pampered them and whispered words of encouragement, and they made magic happen before her eyes.
Once outdoor temperatures stopped threatening frost, Jill moved the leafy babies into rich soil beds. She watered them, terrified of root rot but equally terrified of drought. When November arrived and the foliage began to die back, the excavation began.
The verdict? They grew—and grew well! We dug up intensely aromatic ginger tubers and turmeric. Take that, zone 6 winters!
