Ginger Production in the Northeast: Increasing Profitability and Success with Intercropping in Variable Growing Environments

Commodities

• Additional Plants: ginger

Practices

• Crop Production: high tunnels or hoop houses, intercropping

Baby ginger represents a potentially high-value crop of interest to retail customers. While ginger has been grown
successfully as a Northeast niche crop, it typically requires substantial initial investment for seed stock and, given the
time to harvestable maturity, commitment of a protective growing environment. Ginger has high profit potential as a
standalone crop, but these investments may deter farmers from growing ginger. However, cost and time-related barriers to production might be mitigated by reducing infrastructure costs and increasing overall revenue. This project aims to
determine whether total row-foot profitability can be increased by incorporating intercropping practices to ginger production and whether ginger productivity can be maintained with lower infrastructure inputs than previously thought. Ginger will be grown in raised beds in three different environments—a high tunnel from planting to harvest, a caterpillar tunnel erected in late summer, and in the field without protective cover. Two additional annual vegetables (carrots and green beans) will be interplanted alongside ginger in each of these environments during the first half of the seasons and compared to a ginger-only control crop, with yields of all crops compared across growing environments to determine production success. Demonstrating that ginger can be successfully grown with reduced infrastructure costs while increasing revenue from the production space via intercropping may encourage ginger production among Northeast growers toward boosting farm profits. Findings will be disseminated to regional farmers and Extension professionals via social media, onsite tours and workshops, a conference presentation, and a published fact sheet and journal article. 

There are two primary objectives for this trial:  

Objective 1: Evaluate the yield of baby ginger in an
intercropping system with two distinct interplanted annual
vegetable crops (carrots and green beans) toward maximizing
row-foot profitability of production space.  

Objective 2: Compare the productivity of baby ginger with and
without the two interplanted annual vegetable crops across three
distinct growing environments (field-grown, caterpillar tunnel,
high tunnel) towards demonstrating potential for reduced
infrastructure needs.