Growing Lemongrass
Up until last year, I didn’t even have a clue what lemongrass was. It is an obsession of my teenage daughter’s. To cut costs I wanted to try my hand at growing lemongrass.
Our daughter is into holistic approaches to life. She tends to gravitate toward finding natural remedies, creating beauty products from scratch, eating items she has grown and likes to dry herbs she grows.
(Sorry for the quality of the photos. I took them with my phone and let’s say, I am not as pleased as with my DSLR.)
We purchase plenty of lemongrass
So, this year we decided to grow our own. It was just a matter of locating our seed or plant.
Find it at an Asian Market
One Saturday morning we headed off in search of Asian markets in our community. Since Asian cooking uses lemongrass as one their spices we thought we would have no problem finding what we needed.
We quickly learned that we had a language barrier between us and it was going to be tougher than we first thought. We still looked around just in case we stumbled onto what we coveted.
At a family owned Thai store with a wealth of information. An elderly lady giggled and reached into a large vat of water.
Fresh Lemongrass
She pulled out a rubber banded bunch of freshly bundled lemongrass. She pointed to the bottom where the roots should be and said a word that sounded much like water.
She proceeded to peel a small layer away from the bottom and said water and then dirt.
If you are a gardener at heart you know what this means. Right?
Stick the darn thing in water long enough and it will grow roots. Then you can plant it. Why didn’t I think of this?
Did It Work?
We are a few days into our growing roots process and sure enough, we have roots!!
What We Did
Day 1
1.) Cut off all but 3-4 inches above bulb.
2.) Peeled outer thick layer off of bottom.
3.) Place stalks in a glass of water filled half full of cool water. Set it in a sunny window.
Day 3
By day three you can already start to see strong roots growing.
I changed the water on day three. Then allow the roots to grow for an additional 3 days.
Then planted it in a pot of rich soil when I felt I had a good root system.
Conditions For Growing Lemongrass
Lemongrass likes a warm, tropical weather. So, living in Wisconsin requires me to bring the plant indoors when the temps fall below 50 degrees. Otherwise, it can stay outdoors.
One Pretty Cool Fact
A wonderful fact that benefits me for growing lemongrass is that if you have pots on your back deck in your seating area it will keep your pesky mosquitoes at bay. It has that same lemon scent as citronella that repels mosquitoes.
Where You Can Purchase Plants
If you would like to just purchase a plant, you can do that too. In our area, we had a hard time locating one. I hear at certain times they can be found, but that window is small. You can purchase lemongrass
Now I am excited to see what additional ideas my daughter has for our new yard treasure.
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