Plant Find: Turmeric

There was a (very) small mid-week farmer's market held at a neighborhood park in Galveston and I walked over to see if there was anything interesting.  One of the five vendors had a handful of plants for sale, one of which looked like a Canna or ginger to me.  I asked the owner what it was and he surprised me by saying it was Turmeric.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa) plant

Sometime last year I was in a cooking phase and had a recipe I really wanted to cook that called for turmeric roots.  I have turmeric powder and knew that I could use that, but started researching the roots, which would surely be a more fresh and potentially have a richer flavor.  I found that I could buy turmeric roots on Amazon and they look a lot like ginger roots, except they are orange inside, much like a sweet potato.

Turmeric root, used for cooking

I talked to the guy at the farmer's market and asked him how he goes about harvesting and replanting.  He says that he grows the turmeric in a raised bed and will harvest about 90% of his clump of turmeric and leave 10% behind to grow the next batch.  He wasn't asking much for the small plant and I decided that even if I don't end up using the plant for cooking and just grow it as ornamental (like all my other plants) I would be happy to have a turmeric plant in my collection.