Why You Should Grow Ginger Flower As An Indoor Plant To Enjoy Beautiful Blooms
Take a trip to the tropics without leaving the comfort of your living room, by growing kahili ginger, indoors. This moisture loving, tropical plant is in the ginger family Zingiberaceae and is native to the eastern Himalayas of Nepal and Bhutan. The plant goes by many different names, including ginger lily, yellow ginger lily, kahili garland lily, kahili ginger, and kahili ginger lily. Its fragrant blossoms that come in shades of yellow, orange, red, and burgundy are more than enough reason you should pop this ornamental in a container near a sunny, living room window.
In many areas of its native habitat, kahili ginger is invasive and shouldn't be planted outdoors. For those living in regions with colder weather, where kahili ginger isn't as hardy, you're even more justified to grow this plant indoors to wait out the winter time. Since the plant is hardy in zones eight to 11, bringing the plant inside to be grown indoors is critical to its survival in regions where it's not as resilient. As a tropical plant, kahili ginger thrives in humid conditions so if you can create your own indoor greenhouse for tropical plants, that's a great option to ensure it grows its best flowers or you can choose to optimize the plant's humidity and light levels with a few tweaks to its indoor environment.
How to care for your ginger flowers indoors
To successfully grow kahili ginger indoors, there are specific care requirements to be mindful of from its container size to its soil requirements and light tolerance. Because the plant is known to reach a whopping eight feet tall, kahili ginger should be grown in pots that are three gallons or larger. The pot should have excellent drainage, as well. Its soil needs lots of organic matter and can be clay or silt-loam. It should be kept consistently moist to mimic the plant's naturally mesic growing conditions in its native habitat.
As for sunlight requirements, kahili ginger enjoys full sun and partial shade, with direct sunlight, except for the winter, where bright, indirect light will suffice. Be sure to rotate the pot of your ginger flowers consistently to prevent your plant from starting to look lopsided. And just in case you're the impatient type, know that you can expect the showy kahili ginger flowers to blossom in summer, specifically late summer to early fall.
Optimizing humidity and light levels to get the best ginger flower blossoms
To ensure your ginger blossoms bloom at their brightest, there are a few things you can do. The first is to optimize the humidity levels of your kahili ginger's growing environment, since indoor air may be too dry for them, especially in the winter. To do this without a greenhouse, you can use a humidifier within the room that the plant grows, placing kahili ginger near the humidifier. Additionally, if you have other houseplants perfect for growing indoors, you can group them together with the kahili ginger to create a micro-climate that moistens their surrounding air.
To account for their need of bright light, you can use indoor grow lights near kahili ginger if you live somewhere with less than optimal light conditions for their growth. LED grow lights are strong contenders that effectively mimic the sun's wide spectrum of light that kahili ginger adores. Meanwhile, fluorescent bulbs are a second option for those who need a light solution that is easily accessible and cost effective.