In the garden trade you can often get specimens of different turmeric varieties whose spike-like inflorescences are about to bloom or have even blossomed. It is also relatively easy to pull the plants themselves out of the rhizome-like tubers.

Turmeric for outdoors should be preferred indoors from February

The best time for planting the tubers

Nowadays, different types of turmeric are often available almost all year round as potted plants in various specialist garden and house plant shops. In fact, it is almost irrelevant for a culture on the windowsill at what time of year the tubers are planted in the ground. However, it is always the case that the above-ground parts of the plants wilt some time after flowering and eventually die. This is quite normal when cultivating turmeric, as the plant withdraws into its rhizome-shaped outlasting organ for the dormant period. If you want to put your turmeric plant outdoors as a potted plant, you should bring the tubers indoors in spring. To do this, the tubers are planted in the ground around February and placed in a warm place with a temperature of around 22 to 24 degrees Celsius. The frost-sensitive plants can then usually be placed outside from May.

How to properly plant turmeric tubers

It is important for healthy sprouting of the tubers that they do not become rotten due to waterlogging. There are a number of possible ways to do this:

  • a very shallow planting on the substrate surface
  • very economical watering
  • the use of drainage material in the plant substrate

Some gardeners just place their turmeric tubers on the moistened soil and press them down lightly. The tubers are only planted deeper when green shoots have already appeared. However, it has also proven useful to mix the potting soil used with a proportion of around 30% gravel. In this way, the tubers are sufficiently aerated and excess moisture can drain off easily.

Overwinter turmeric properly

An important point in the care of turmeric is the right overwintering. The tubers of the heat-loving plants should be dug up outdoors as soon as the temperatures drop well below 10 degrees Celsius. Then the rhizome tubers are overwintered in a dark room and at around 15 degrees Celsius in one of the following ways:

  • "naked" and dry
  • pounded in sand
  • in a pot with relatively dry soil

tips

As a rule, turmeric tubers grown in pots are dug up in autumn to be divided due to their size and sometimes used as a spice. Tubers that have overwintered in pots should also be dug up and repotted in spring at the latest.

Category:

Vegetable garden