How to Plant Red Sugar Cane
The weather is a lot cooler here in Yuma, AZ now. It’s the perfect time to start prepping your garden for seeding and planting. Transplanting other ornamental plants as well.
I enjoy planting from scratch so I am going to prep my garden for seeding vegetables and herbs plus other foods. However, I am going to talk about planting a red sugar cane.
Things You Will Need
- Shovel (optional)
- Trowel
- Red Sugar cane stalk (1)
- Butcher Knife
- A block of wood
- Gloves (optional)
- Hat (optional)
- Water
Okay, let’s get started.
First, I will show you how I plant my res sugar cane stalk the easy way and then we’ll get into the dirty stuff in a bit.
The Easy Way
So, this is my way. I first used my butcher knife and cut my stalk. Making sure not to cut the budding point. The budding point is a little bud on the node where the root primordia are on or between each internode.
See the image above.
Second, I take my cut up sugar canes to the area where I want to grow them. I use my trowel to dig a canal deep enough to bury the sugar cane laying down. The reason why I laid it down is that the root primordia will start to root into the soil.
And the buds will start to grow upward. You can do it standing up just make sure that the root primordia is close to the soil and that it can start to root into the dirt.
Then I cover the sugar can with dirt but I exposed the buds. You can add compost before and after you set them in. I used compost and added hay on top. Just to keep them cozy.
The Dirty Way
This is my dirty way. Get a root ball. This is where the shovel comes in for prepping your ground for transplanting the sugar cane root ball.
One good thing about sugar cane rootball is that their roots are shallow and you don’t have to dig too deep. Measure the depth of the ball and dig a hole big enough to put the rootball in.
If you have starting shoots already then bury it with the shoots are coming out. If not then cover the rootball lightly with dirt.
When it starts to multiply later on you can cut them down and make sugar cane juices. Break them from the dirt and do what we do in the country. Rip them off with your teeth. Highly not recommended. Unless you want to.
Well, I spoke to my mom and she told me to untangle the rootball for individual roots. I didn’t want to but when mom’s speaking, mom has spoken. So, this now another way to plant rootballs.
This is what I did. I spread out the roots and found that there were 7 roots starting from the root primordia. It’s a little bit more work but mom has spoken.
It was a lot of work. Prying the ball into 7 individual roots. Once I separated the roots there were dead and old roots that needed to be cut and trimmed.
Take the scissors and carefully cut out the old roots. Do not do what I did and cut off the sprouting shoot! Bad move on my part. Learn from me, be gentle. 🙂
Dig holes 12inches apart. Set them into each hole and cover them completely. Soon new shoots will appear! Have fun.
My solution and conclusion
There you have it. This is how I plant my red sugar canes.
Does anyone know where I can get blood sugar cane stalks? These are a little different as well. The blood sugar cane has dark red stalks, roots, and leaves. The one we just planted was the dark red sugar can. It has dark red stalks and green leaves.
Please spread the word.
Thank you for reading my blog. I really appreciated your time as yours are as valuable as mine. If you have any comments, questions, or like to educate me, please feel free to do so. I love learning new things.
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Thanks to Michelle, Lena, and her in-laws for the red sugar cane stalks. Thank you.