Vegetable · Zingiberaceae
When to plant ginger
A tropical rhizome that needs eight to ten months of warmth. Outside the tropics it is grown in a large pot started early indoors and lifted before winter.
Start seed indoors
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
2 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
240-300
From sowing to a first picking.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make ginger plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 2 weeks after the last frost.
- Expect 240–300 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
Getting the timing right
Sprout the rhizome indoors eight weeks before the last frost and move outside two weeks after it. Young stem ginger can be lifted at six months; mature ginger needs the full season.
Frost tolerance
Killed at 0C and dormant below 15C. Harvest when the leaves yellow, which in a temperate climate means before the first frost rather than at true maturity.
Classified as tender, with damage expected below 0°C (32°F)32°F (0°C).