10/23/2008

Cucuma elata flower

My cucuma elata ginger produced a very nice flower stalk recently. This plant is among one of those that managed to escape my "search and destroy" operation a year ago.

The story started from Bangkok three years ago where i bought $5 worth of different types of ginger roots from CTC market, including thai tumeric (different from the local ones in the market). Some cost 10baht while some are 20baht per piece. I put all of them into 3 big planters outside my house and before i knew it i have lots of different gingers sprouting all over the place. Very interesting at first but soon i lost interest and decided to clear the place for rosella, barbados cherry, mulberry and other herbs. So i decided to dig out the ginger roots.

Not as easy as i thought because i did not realise how big the roots have gotten. I dug out enough roots to fill 3 NTUC bags! And some of the escapees produced another round of ginger plants a few months later.

Since they are so lucky i decided to leave them alone so now i still have a few of those that got away.