Friday, August 27, 2010

How to Plant Lemon Grass


Lemon grass is not really a staple in Filipino cooking but at home my mom would use it to stuff her chicken roast, stewed mung bean soup ( Monggo Soup ) & Filipino style Chicken Soup ( Chicken Tinola ). And when I cook these dishes now in my kitchen it would always seem that something is missing when I don't add lemon grass to it. I always buy some stalks but they would be expensive when I get it from my local grocery and getting it from my Asian grocer is not practical as well.

I would buy lemon grass in small amounts until a friend who is also a Filipina gave me some from her garden. I was curious how she got it. I was not able to ask her but my other friend said she buys hers from a nursery in the summer. It got me thinking that I should grow my own as well. I researched online and found out that you can grow the lemon grass from the stalks. Then last summer I decided to try it.

You will need the following to grow your lemongrass:

3 or more stalks of Lemon Grass
- this is mostly available in oriental groceries, choose a healthy fresh stalk
Glass with water

Place the stalks in in your glass of water and keep this in a sunny spot, I kept mine in my kitchen window. In about 2-3 weeks the roots will sprout and this will make it easier for you to replant it. Back home they would directly plant a fresh stalk and water the soil frequently to encourage sprouting but using the water-in-glass method is fool-proof for me so I use it each time. You can choose to separately plant each stalks when they're ready or plant them in in one spot.

This summer I have grown my lemon grass with less watering and still it was fine. I guess I only did once a week and even when there were times that temperature have gone up to the 90s. It's a great herb to grow considering it requires less maintenance.

2 comments:

Lory said...

Just want to let you know I used your method to try growing lemongrass. I was so excited I had three of them that I planted in big pots! I had enough harvested by fall that I used for my frozen chickens. I will do that again this year and try transplanting out in the garden.

WonderWoman said...

I'm glad my tip worked for you. Thanks for dropping by Manang, you made me smile today :)