Once upon a gardening time, I planted Turmeric in sacks and containers. Within 10 months, I was able to grow and harvest table sized turmeric stems from a bucket. I obtained some fresh turmeric stems from a spice vendor at Mile 1 Market in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. I'm not a lover of fresh turmeric. My intention of buying it was to grow my own turmeric at home. The quantity of turmeric I got was too much to plant alone, so I used a portion for making turmeric spice - by dehydrating the turmeric and crushing to a fine powder.
Of the remaining turmeric, I selected the viable ones for planting. They were too dry so I soaked them in a glass of pure water. After about two weeks they had sprouting eyes which were indications of new growth. I planted the stems directly in the a plastic bucket that I perforated for water drainage. The turmeric began to grow along with some ginger I planted by the side.
One thing I noticed was that the growth rate of the turmeric was slow when compared to the ginger. The tumeric was growing at a moderate pace and I was patiently waiting for the day I'll harvest my home-grown turmeric stems. And it came to pass, nine (9) months later, the leaves of the turmeric had withered and turned brown and I felt the need to reach for the soil. Turmeric grows as an underground stem, this stem is modified to store food.
I had to dig into the bucket to reach for these stem. I carried this exercise with some of my allies. We harvested and washed the turmeric harvest and it was 100% organic and so it didn't really produce large size stems. These are some of the turmeric stems I got from planting turmeric stems in containers. This was my first time planting turmeric and so I was very happy to harvest from it. The harvest wasn't a big as I expected but one thing was sure - it was all organic !
Cheers to Royal Green Diary
