Garden
How to Grow Lemongrass from Store-Bought Stalks
- I do a lot of Vietnamese cooking at home, and the unique flavor of lemongrass is one of my absolute favorites
- I love it in these Vietnamese pulled pork tacos which are so simple to make, but taste fancy enough to serve at a dinner party (the pulled pork is great with rice too).
- I also love making lemongrass simple syrup to use in my sparkling summer sangria and fresh lemongrass-ginger ale, which are just the thing to revive you on a hot summer afternoon after being in the garden all day.
- When I first discovered you can propagate lemongrass from store-bought stalks, I drove right down to the local market and picked up a bundle of fresh lemongrass stalks to root in water.
- Propagating plants from living herbs is a fun way to score new plants for your garden. It’s like you’re getting free plants, even if you bought them.
- Think of it this way: You spent a few dollars for a handful of lemongrass stalks, but you’ll turn them into hundreds of new stalks over the course of many years. And I’ll show you exactly how to do it!
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Growing lemongrass in a cold climate—it’s possible!
- I rooted store-bought lemongrass for my previous garden in Southern California, and the plants grew healthy and strong for seven years (right until we moved away) and are still thriving under the new owners’ care.
- (This is what the lemongrass looked like after two years in the ground. Each clump began as three rooted stalks.)
- Rather than digging them up and taking the plants with us, I decided to start a brand-new lemongrass clump in our current home in Central Oregon. It won’t survive frost in this climate, but it’ll flourish outside in summer and live indoors in winter.
- That means the new lemongrass is a container plant that moves happily between our house, greenhouse, and yard, and we’ve since repotted it into a larger container (than what you see in these pictures) so we can have a bigger harvest.
- I’ve updated this post (originally published in 2010—one of the very first posts on my blog, if you can believe it!) to show my fool-proof method for starting your own lemongrass plant from store-bought stalks. (Even if you live somewhere cold.)
- I’ll also share what I’ve learned after rooting the herb in a warm climate versus cool climate, because there was a big difference in rooting time!
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How to propagate lemongrass from store-bought stalks
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1. Start with fresh lemongrass with the entire stem intact.
- The stalks you buy don’t need (and probably won’t have) roots at the bottom, but they do need to have the the entire stem (base) intact.
- This is important to note because some store-bought stalks come with the bottoms cut off — and those won’t work for propagation.
- Start with at least five or six healthy stalks. Not all of them may root, so this ensures you get enough rooted stalks to start a new plant off quickly.
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2. Trim any brown, older leaves.
- To start, cut off the stiff, topmost leaves where they start to split apart. You can simply make a fresh cut (a few inches down) across the top of the stalks. Getting rid of the dead foliage just keeps things neater, as they’ll eventually fall off and turn slimy anyway.
- Try to resist peeling the woody outer layers that form the stem, as new leaves will grow from within these layers.
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3. Place the lemongrass stalks in water.
- Put the stalks in a jar or vase and fill with a few inches of water. Place the jar in a sunny location like a south-facing windowsill and then… just wait.
- Change the water a couple times a week (or when it turns cloudy) and within a week, you should see new leaves begin to grow from the top. (But sometimes they won’t appear until much later, and I’ll explain why in the next step.)
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4. Continue changing the water until the roots grow nice and long.
- New roots and leaves usually begin to emerge after about a week.
- Wait until the roots are at least 3 inches long and the stalks have begun to divide (via offshoot stalks) before you plant them.
- In summer (early September) in Southern California, the roots grew 1 centimeter in Week 1, then 2 to 3 inches in Week 2, and finally 4 to 5 inches in Week 3.
- By the end of the third week, the plants were ready to go in the ground.
- Contrast that with Central Oregon, where I started rooting the lemongrass in fall (late November) in a sunny window:
