Myoga - Zingiber mioga (Japanese Ginger)

[applestar]

Just came home with a big bag of myoga flowerbuds and a tub full of myoga divisions -- escapees growing outside the fenced garden where we harvested all the flowerbuds today.

It was getting dark and I didn't have time to verify the cultivation details, so I just prepped a spot in the garden and shoved them in the ground with extra sand, lime, and rock phosphate. But having had the chance to check now, the location may be too sunny although it IS a somewhat protected spot that hopefully won't get as frigid as a more exposed location. They are supposed to be hardy to 0°F.

I took one flowerbud and tried scattering thinly sliced pieces over some quesadilla and nachos. What can I say, we were eating Mexican and not Japanese tonight. it worked though.
I'll have to experiment some more tomorrow.

[rainbowgardener]

I will have to look for it some time. I think I have to give up on trying to grow grocery store ginger. Maybe the ginger in our stores isn't fresh enough or it has been treated not to sprout. Anyway I have tried that several times and never gotten it to sprout.

I did use the store ginger last night - made an ethopian dish, basically a kind of stir fry, with potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots, garlic, ginger, cumin, tumeric, salt, and pepper. It came out really good, a nice wintery kind of dish, hearty and warming. The recipe didn't call for it, but I threw in a can of kidney beans for protein, since I'm vegetarian and was eating this as a main dish. Cabbage was from the CSA, onions and garlic from my garden.

[applestar]

Just remember you can't grow it from myoga sold at the store (if you see any) -- those are only flower buds.
They don't taste exactly like ginger either.... Kind of hard to describe, though the foliage looks exactly like those of ginger in the container which is now in its annual winter room upstairs.

I'll PM you.

[imafan26]

If you are growing ginger, you should look for rhizomes around January-February. That is naturally when the plants go dormant and a re harvested. You want to find young fresh roots. They will have paler and firmer skins and won't be as brown and you will be looking for pieces with small bumps on the fingers. Keep the ginger damp but not soggy. I put mine on a tray on my bench, it gets watered by the sprinkler so it doesn't dry out. Around March-April it will be ready to plant.

I think my myoga died, I did not give it enough water. The plant is rarely sold here, I have to find someone who has some. You are right the buds in the store are just the flowering part of the myoga and cannot be grown.

[applestar]

According to what I've been reading so far, myoga likes cooler conditions and is pretty winter hardy -- is that why you would have problems growing them in Hawaii? I imagine they can grow them in higher altitudes along with coffee, etc.

Yesterday, we had portobello mushroom slices sautéed in sunflower oil and butter with sliced myoga, green onions and garlic chives. Himalayan pink salt, fresh minced rosemary, and minced Trinidad Perfum pepper, and final drizzle of EVOO. Yum.

Being flowerbuds, they apparently don't store well. Also, since these were end of season final pickings, some of them were already blown and it took some work to clean them, but I managed to wash, halve and clean them all, then made a jar of sweet refrigerator pickled myoga, a covered glass bowl of miso myoga, and wrapped the best ones in some paper towels to experiment some more in cooking in the next couple of days.

I did a taste test of the sweet pickled myoga after a few hours and they were already very palate pleasing simply with freshly cooked rice handrolled in nori, but they are supposed to be eaten after 2-3 days and within 2-3 weeks.

[applestar]

Sweet pickled myoga:

Outer sheaths of the myoga buds are mahogany/brick colored and the pickled myoga and the pickle juice turn into lovely pink color.

[alicetofu]

Aloha all, I am new to this blog and live in Hawaii. Can anyone tell me where I can get Myoga ginger here on the Big Island?

[imafan26]

Myoga grows fine in Hawaii but they do prefer to be in partial shade and not full sun and to have regular water. Not many people grow them so plants are not that easy to find.

[applestar]

In the OP of this thread, I posted about harvesting Myoga in October, so I was really surprised to notice a flowering myoga bud in my little patch this morning.

A little exploratory digging revealed some flower buds that are definitely ready to harvest and others that are still too small. So I got this much for today.

I piled up some mulch and soil over the unharvested ones I exposed, so hopefully they will grow a little bigger.

[imafan26]

Mioga, like the Jamaican ginger bloom in the fall and early winter. It is a little early but some of my Jamaican ginger looks like it may bloom soon too. Mioga needs to be watched since sometimes the buds are under the surface of the soil and once they bloom they are too tough to eat. After the bloom, the tops die down and the roots go dormant again. I have mine in one gallon pots, but I think they will be happier in a wider pot that has more room for the roots to spread. I don't put gingers in the ground because they can become quite invasive here.

[applestar]

Today's Myoga harvest

...we had a long soaking all day rain -- first rainfall in over a month. I think this triggered the Myoga to start blooming

[HoneyBerry]

Applestar,
You are one of the most fantastico and cool-a-moondo-est and most amazing gardener on the face of this earth. Monarch Butterflies and now ginger! These are things that I love most.

[applestar]

Thank you!

[applestar]

Myoga season has started!



I need to keep down this patch to the current size so I HAVE to harvest every flower bud.

[applestar]

We had approx. 1 inch of rain on Monday, and the Myoga went crazy! Remember these are FLOWER BUDS.

They need to be rinsed thoroughly because they grow just under the surface of the soil and poke up when getting ready to bloom.


I'm draining the water/moisture by arranging them upside down in the strainer.

[imafan26]

Congrats. You can pickle myoga for later. I think I lost the myoga I had. It is hard to get unless you know somebody, they will not grow from the flowers only the rhizomes.

If you grow ginger from the market they have to be relatively fresh and plump. The main harvest of ginger is coming soon. Ginger early in the year are young ginger, good for pickling but not for growing.

I still have ginger in the refrigerator I harvested last season. It lasts a long time.

[applestar]

Myoga got a jump on me when I harvested them yesterday -- almost all of these had first blossoms that bloomed. The delicate blossoms only last one day then turn into mush, so I had to process them right away. I decided to cut off the pointy ends about 1/3 of the way down to pull out the blossoms, then freeze just the blossoms in a ziplock sandwich bag. They are good as salad garnishes and adds delicate flavor to clear Japanese broths -- osuimono.



I cut the Myoga in half and sprinkled sea salt, then squeezed out some of the moisture that came out (I think this takes out some of the bitterness, just like with eggplants and cucumbers. The process also helped to get last little bit more dirt out from between the layers.) then minced them and added akashiso vinegar, lemon juice, mirin, a bit of soy sauce (about 1/3 of the original recipe), bonito flakes, tahini, roasted sesame oil, and unsulfured molasses.

This was excellent freshly made -- thick with tahini -- on rice. I imagine it will be somewhat watery today. I need to make some rice so I can have a taste.

[applestar]

This year's Myoga harvest has started


...I gave these to my Mom except for one which I minced and scattered over MY portion of Hmart sushi Such delicate flavor! But I guess it's an acquired taste -- DH says they are too bitter and DDs' tastebuds still need more training

[MaLiorzh]

I bought myself a plant of myoga this year and have it in a large pot on the terrace for the moment. My hardiness zone is 9a so could I leave it out all year round or will a couple of days at -4C in the winter kill it off?

[applestar]

We have about a week of consecutive overnight lows around -20°C (-5°F) in the depth of the winter here, so I think it should be OK to handle -4°C, even in a container. If in doubt, I would place it inside a larger pot or maybe wooden crate and fill the space around the pot with leaves, straw, or other insulation.

[MaLiorzh]

-20°C! That'd be a natural disaster here. Anyway its reassuring to know. I'll keep it in a pot for this year and then when I divide the plant I'll find a spot in the garden for it.

[applestar]

I started clearing the weeds around the myoga (Japanese ginger) patch and discovered they have already started to bloom from the sunniest side of the patch. You only eat the flower buds (preferably not yet blooming) of Japanese ginger, although the delicate flowers are great garnish that can be enjoyed if you grow them. The fragrant and antiseptic leaves can be parboiled and used to wrap and cook foods or to serve them. I just found a recipe for making myoga leaf wrapped, steamed sweet rice flour dumplings filled with white bean jam filling.


...it’s interesting that the true ginger (left) is also blooming at this time...

[applestar]

I’ve been harvesting more Myoga —


Since the part you harvest are the flowerbuds which emerge from the ground at the base of stems, you have to push those leaf stalks aside etc get at them. And the bruised leaves smell absolutely wonderful. I knew you can put the stalks and leaves in baths and use infusions for bath /personal care products. This year, I was delighted to learn that there are also some regional specialty summer sweets in Japan made with the Myoga leaves as the wrapper.

After consulting several varied recipes, I decided to adapt from them and make up my own. Instead of sweet and regular rice flour dough, I decided to use soft-cooked sweet and white rice, and worked in some whole wheat flour and added fully ripened persimmons since this fruit is also in season. For the filling, I used the beans I had on hand, and opted for navy beans over adzuki. Navy beans cook up with mild flavor and tender bean skin that is even softer than adzuki bean skin.so you can lightly mash the sweetened beans but leave some of the beans whole without noticeable mouthfeel.

Myoga Leaf-wrapped, Steamed Sweet Persimmon Rice, filled with Sweet Brown cane Sugar and Date Palm Sugar Navy bean jam

[applestar]

I didn’t harvest much Myoga flowerbuds this year due to very limited time in the garden during the critical short harvest period — Just enough to make 2 jars of sweet vinegar pickled myoga buds

But I came across new information that you can blanch new spring shoots, much like white asparagus and white celery, scallions, etc., so I may experiment with this technique in spring (of course that’s another busy time of the year, so we will have to see —

のりんご
I learned that myoga can be eaten not only as flower buds but also as stems, so I tried making myoga bamboo.

I didn't know what to do, so I covered it with garbage cans, covered it with soil, and tried it as much as possible.

Harvesting Myoga Ginger Stem << called "Myoga-dake" = myoga bamboo