The knobbly rhizome behind so much cooking will sprout on a warm windowsill from a piece bought to eat.
Ginger is grown for its rhizome — the swollen underground stem, not a root — which spreads sideways just below the surface. Above ground it sends up tall, reed-like shoots that can reach a metre in a warm season.
To start one, choose a plump piece of shop ginger with visible growth buds (the small nubs that look like blunt horns). Let a cut surface dry for a day, then lay it just under the surface of a wide, shallow pot of rich, moist compost, buds facing up. It needs warmth and patience: shoots can take several weeks to appear, and the plant grows slowly until temperatures are reliably warm.
Keep it in bright, indirect light, water enough that the compost never fully dries, and feed occasionally through summer. New rhizome is ready to lift after eight to ten months, when the leaves begin to yellow and die back — though you can steal a little young ginger from the edge of the clump long before then.
A succulent that stores its own water and asks for almost nothing in return — the classic starter plant for anyone who has killed everything else.
A clump-forming grass with a sharp citrus scent, grown for the tender stems at the heart of Southeast Asian cooking.
Closely related to ginger and grown the same way, turmeric hides a vivid orange interior prized as a spice and dye.