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Alpinia Caerulea Atherton Red Back Native Ginger Seeds
Packet of 40+ super fresh seeds!
Very interesting native bushtucker plant.
As the name suggests it is a delicious native ginger, much like galangal actually, mild, sweet and spicy, with large knobbly roots. Unlike ginger you can just chew the root as is as the flavor is milder and not overpowering.
Great when you are dehydrated hiking or fruit picking, awesome stuff, and a real energy boost.
The leaves are great for wrapping fish, yams or green vegetables in before baking, just like you would use banana leaf or aluminium foil.
Seals in the juices and steams them, adding a beautiful aroma at the same time.
The plant produces a beautiful blue fruit that is edible too, eat the sweat arils inside the shell, spit the seeds out somewhere shady and moist where you wouldn’t mind a new plant.
Grows fast and produces roots prolifically, handles frost and very high drought conditions, great in a curry, spice blend, tea, and I make an awesome ginger beer, hooch/booze sort of thing.
I just mix 1kg of very well washed, finely chopped, crushed or even easier, minced root, with a couple kilos sugar and put it in a 20liter drum, fill with water.
When it starts to foam up a couple days later I filter out the fiber and wack a non-return airlock (bit of old hose in the drum lid that goes into a jar of water sitting on top, lets the co2 bubble out, but stops the bugs getting in).
Couple weeks later I check the bubbling has stopped, bottle it up with a teaspoon of sugar in each tally or longneck bottle.
Headache in a bottle, tastes awesome and makes a great gift!
Make sure you store it somewhere sensible like in a cardboard box in the shed or under the house as the odd one goes off like a bomb and the glass can be messy.
Longer you store it the better it tastes.
Anyway, this the Atherton Tablelands red backed form of Alpinia Caerulea which is really quite ornamental.
It normally takes about 2 months for germination, but very high success rate.
I got about ~80% with the last lot, but these are even fresher.
I’m a big fan of all the Gingers and Turmeric species and I keep many others at this Ginger & Turmeric link.
Even as ornamental’s they make a great choice, and if you grow them in a sandy well draining soil mix and only water when dry like I do, then I can’t really see any dramas growing these fellas.
I grow mine all in neglected 9lt pots of sandy soil that hardly ever get a water as it makes the harvest super easy and I believe the harsh conditions increase the potency of the plant. You get slightly smaller tuberous roots compared to growing in lush moist conditions, but the end product is more pungent, oily, and way brighter colours when cut.
You can then just dump the pots of soil out on a piece of wire chicken mesh screen and the sandy soil falls through, roots are all left behind nice and clean. Replant the ones with small plants attached, divide up the tubers for use and/or propagation of more plants.
A small piece of clean fresh root grows about 4x the size before dying off for harvesting, and a small piece of root with a plant stem attached already grows 6-10x the size between harvests. Small plants grow way faster and bigger than pieces of root the same size/weight so take note of that when replanting your first couple crops.
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems no nasties, no problems!!!
