We received a question from one of our customers,

She asked, “what’s happening with this ginger in my yard and is there anything I should do?”

What’s happening to the ginger in this picture because the flower is old. It gets heavy as the flower gets elongated and begins to lean over. The flower keeps growing and will start to develop little rooted plantlets from the flower. If the flower gets heavy enough the bract touches the ground and they can root in the ground. A lot of iris do this so they call them ‘walking’ iris.

This explains how you planted iris on one side of your garden and they ended up on the other. They walked themselves over. 🙂

When a ginger bract begins to age, cut it down all the way to about 2-4 inches from the ground. This will keep them looking clean and will allow the plant to put its resources into creating new stems and flowers.

Mahalo Robin Peterson of Sharon’s Plants in Waimanalo