spice Archives - SpadeRunner

Growing turmeric, a warmly rewarding crop

September 1, 2015December 28, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Turmeric has turned out to be a great crop for us here. If you have a warm climate or even just a warm spot over Summer, I’d encourage you to give it a try. I’ve just dug mine up, and was astounded by the amount there was, and by how densely it grows. It is a warm season plant, with attractive ginger type leaves through the Summer which slowly yellow off through Winter here, so that the top is only completely dead by the end of Winter, which is when…

Growing turmeric

July 9, 2015December 29, 2015 Stephen Carlin

If you have the right climate and a sunny well drained spot, growing turmeric might be worth a try. It is a relative of ginger, and grows to a similarly attractive clump of lush leaves, which die down in Winter to leave a crown of tasty rhizomes.

For everything a season.

May 4, 2015December 29, 2015 Stephen Carlin

The famous line from Ecclesiastes has many metaphorical applications, but it has very literal value in the garden. Sometimes when a plant is hard to grow it can just be down to daylength or temperature, not soil quality or the other things we try to get right. Things are perhaps a little more straightforward in cooler climates where you just need to ‘plant after last frost’, or catch the last warm days of Autumn to get winter crops established. In the subtropics the seasons are long and the planting times ambiguous.…