Growing sugar cane in cold climates Zone 7a. Virginia grown sugar cane

If there is a will, there is a way. Today I want to show you something that I thought was not possible in zone 7a. This plant right here is sugarcane and many of you might know this as a tropical plant but it can do really well here in zone 7a. Here's what the plant looks like now after being hit by a couple of frosts. The leaves are dead but you can see here the center is still green and at the bottom here it's looking pretty healthy since it is sugarcane and it has a high content of sugar. It serves as an antifreeze. So I want to harvest my sugarcane here and put it indoors. These little nodes here will become plants in the future so every single node here can become a new plant. So I want to harvest all of it today. I already harvested one from here the other day and I tried it and it's so delicious. If you've never had sugarcane you must give it a try. Machete again to cut this one at the base here. There we go. One down. Take that one as well. Two down. So here's the sugarcane my friends and check out these beautiful sugarcane nodes. I will be able to take all the node pieces here and re-sprout them and plant them out next year. I am following a new YouTuber who is in Alabama and he's giving me lots of great ideas on how to overwinter my sugarcane. I am a little torn about overwintering it because what he does is he mulches them a lot with a lot of leaves but he has them in full sun and I don't have them in the best location. So I'm thinking I'm going to dig out my plant put in a huge pot and then put it inside my greenhouse. That way it stays alive during the winter months. I can take that big pot next year and put it outside in a very sunny location and hopefully get a grove of sugarcane growing here in Northern Virginia. That'd be so cool. You're driving by my house and then you turn around you see papayas and sugarcane growing right in my yard. That's so cool. Anyways let's clean this up a little bit and let's give it a taste test. The top here as it starts getting towards the top is not as ripe obviously. So I think I'm going to save the bottom part for seed for seed for propagation and then I'm going to eat this top part right here. This one is not going to be as sweet but still going to be good. This is my seed for next year and in order to get your hands on one of this you can go to the Asian grocery store. I have a store near my house called H Mart and they bring all sorts of crazy things to there and that's what I did last year. I went to the store I bought a piece just like this. I cut the little chunks into sections and then you can sprout them. You see the little eye right here? This will develop roots and those roots can take hold and create new sugarcanes for you. How cool is that? Virginia grown sugarcane. Once you remove all of the outer husk you can quarter it and you eat it like that. These little pieces like this is what you eat. Just like suspected these pieces are not super sweet because they're from the top so they're not super ripe so they haven't had the time to develop all the sweetness but the other day I ate the little chunky piece from the bottom. That's so delicious. It's so tasty. I started the sugarcane in February of last year and I pre-sprouted them and I put them in the ground in about May right after the last frost that I had and they grew in a spot that was not very sunny. They only got ambient light and maybe two hours of direct sunlight. So if you put this in a sunny spot I bet you it would do a lot better. So that's what I'm going to do next year. I'm going to save these two pieces and use them as seeds. I'm going to pre-sprout them in my basement in my heat mat. Next year in May once the last frost has passed I am going to put these outdoors in a very sunny location and hopefully I'll get a lot more than this. Thank you so much for watching today's video and if you enjoyed it please give it a thumbs up. I'll see you on the next one.