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 diverse 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.