This grew in spite of me

That’s true and am talking about Turmeric. Don’t quite remember when my wife had got these 3-4 plants, it was a Sankranti day i guess. That’s the day when it’s common to see vendors selling turmeric plants in the market. I think kanadiggas use it in their puja. The earliest photo (one below) i have is from Aug last year. I think i had bought it roughly 3-4 months before that. Any one remembers the exact date ??

They were lying there for 2-3 days almost on the verge of drying out when my wife coaxed me to planted them. I planted them in 2 different corners of the garden, hoping, at least they will act as some sort of deterrent to pests. Being an organic gardener, i am often willing to try out these undocumented and intuitive methods and see how it goes. It doesn’t always have to be well documented or scientifically proved way of pest deterrence. But what followed after that was not very intentional. Being in two corner of the garden they received less attention from me. Some time i was even downright negligent and missed watering them regularly.

Of course i have been little negligent of my garden in the past few months owing to some personal reasons. But that’s a different story, which i’ll share some other time.

So, now you know why i say this plant has grown in spite of me. But now that i’m in mood to clean up the garden and start another active growing season i decided to take out these turmeric plants which had almost dried up (my negligence or is it end of life for the plant??). Well i was in for some pleasant surprise. First shoots….

Turmeric

After just rooting out the plants i realized there is something down there and i have to dig it out and be careful while doing it. So, after a patient 15 minutes of digging i got this 1.6 kgs of turmeric!!!! Can you believe it ?? 1.6 kg from just 2 plants in one corner. That surely surprised me big time.

Washed and cleaned of all small tubers it’s still 1.5 kg of raw turmeric!! That makes me about my earliest memory of raw turmeric. Well it goes back to childhood days when we were made eat them raw to cure worms.. yuk!! But, still better, if you come to think of it, because now we probably use some kind of tablets (some chemical !!). isn’t it ??

Also, my maternal grandpa (who passed away when i was just a kid) used to grow and trade turmeric big time. Up there he must be very happy at these results, i guess.

So, now i have to find a sure shot way to make this raw turmeric into powder. I think this produce coupled with the other bunch which is waiting to be harvested will go a long way in making me self sufficient in turmeric powder for a year. Right ??

You know of any sure way to make turmeric powder from this ?

Lot of topics are waiting to be written about.. like strawnberry, Broccoli, Corn 🙂 Stay tuned.