If your garden is frost-free, you can grow ginger in the ground the year around. For a hedge of ginger, which is lovely behind tuberous begonias, set plants a hand's-breadth apart. If you get frost, either grow plants in the ground through summer, then pot them up and bring them indoors for cold weather, or grow your ginger in a pot from the start. Ultimately each plant needs a container 15 inches wide by a foot deep-about 1 3/4 cubic feet of soil mix, which must be rich and fast-draining. In a slightly bigger pot, you can give ginger a brilliant border of impatiens (Busy Lizzie). Give ginger in pots the same situation in the garden as in the ground.

Another reason I grow ginger is to harvest it at the baby stage. Whereas the skin of the ginger at the supermarket is tan and papery, baby ginger's is translucent and sheer. The flesh of mature ginger root is fibrous, but baby's is succulent. The older the roots, the more their bite and snap, so baby ginger tastes mild as May. In China, young ginger is sliced into coins or matchsticks and stir-fried as a vegetable on its own.

Your harvest of ginger root will stay fresh for several weeks in the refrigerator's vegetable drawer. Wrap it in a paper towel and tuck it in a plastic food bag (the paper towel absorbs moisture that might produce mold). My friend of the ginger hand freezes small pieces and then grates them still frozen, since the ginger will turn mushy when thawed. I keep nuggets of peeled ginger on reserve in a jar of Sherry in the refrigerator-they stay plump indefinitely, and the tipple adds warmth in cooking.