Stick it outside, at least for the summer. It should be warm enough where you are now to put it outside at this time (unlike those of us stuck in New England!). Few plants of any sort actually like being grown inside. For the most part houseplants are plants that can tolerate indoor conditions. Flowering is a problem for plants grown indoors (generally) as light levels and humidity are too low. Few gingers make good houseplants. But a hot, sticky Alabama summer is just what your Zingiber loves!

Don't give it too much direct sun, at least at first, as those indoor leaves will sunburn. Once new growth starts move it to a sunnier location.

-Kyle

I don't know, mine always bloomed in pots. I have it actually planted in the ground in my greenhouse now and it is blooming. Mine never dies back either but it does shed the old stalks every year.

Kyle, Bihai, thanks for answering my post. I do leave mine in the greenhouse year round but the plactic is ripped off each spring. I leave it in place so that it is under the shade cloth but I will certainly try another location.

Bihai, I loose the old canes too. Mine has been slow to put up new growth this spring, so that is why I thought maybe it was too pot bound. It is growing in a 10 gallon pot.

Ours have bloomed in a 3 gallon pot (see photo in the gallery) and also in 1 gallon (although flowers were small and few), so I don't think it could be too pot bound in a 10 gallon.

Under shade cloth is good. They don't seem to like the full sun, at least where we are. What percentage is your shade cloth?

I think that this plant is a nice plant, but I think too that it has 'issues' sometimes. I gave a VERY NICE division to a friend who is a very experienced Florida gardner, he planted it in zone 9, it was a fully leafed out division, great hunk of rhizome and healthy root material. It never grew. It seemed just dividing it set it back and although it didn't die (rhizomes stayed firm, green and looked like they should be kicking out all kinds of growth) the plant just stalled, like it went dormant.

This plant was being heavily promoted and sold here as hardy here in zone 8 but its not. It usually gets killed irretrievably by freezes below 32, or comes back extremely tiny and just fades away.

LisaCLV, I think the shade cloth is 50%. It usually looks great. At this moment it looks a little ratty. It actually looks like it's gotten too hot. That could very well be. We had about two weeks of really crazy weather, freezing temps at night and high 60's to mid 70's during the day, now we are back to the mid 80's for daytime and 50's and 60's for night temps

Bihai it was said to be hardy here too. I saw it and couldn't resist. I love it for the color and the smell, but would still love to see a bloom.

Ours get ratty-looking too. This seems to be a problem with some of the Zingibers. I don't know if they're really susceptible to foliar disease, or if the leaves are just so fragile they get beat-up really easily (probably both, and sunburn doesn't help either). At any rate, they only seem to look really good after a flush of new growth. I had to do quite a bit of selective trimming on the one in the photo to get it to look decent.

50% shade sounds fine, I don't think you need to give it any more light than that, but I'm not sure why it hasn't bloomed. Our big one bloomed around january-february and it looks pretty crappy right now. There's another one the same size, though, that didn't do anything. Who knows?

the nurseries selling this as zone 8 hardy often don't know and are going by the info given to them from the tc lab. I have absolutely nothing good to say about this particular person, but a zone 8 label on a zone 10 plant does not surprise me.

Z. malaysianum 'Midnight' is an evergreen species so there is no need to cut it back. Are you fertilizing it during the summer? A heavier watering and feeding scheduling during the warmer months may be all you need. In addition, many zingibers don't bloom in there first year or two. When they have a large enough clump established, then they become pretty consistent. this seems to be true with most of the gingers that bloom on separate stems. ie, a butterfly ginger will often bloom when a clump is only one or two stems, but a shampoo ginger might not do anything until it has 5, 6 or more stems etc.

I got some flack for it awhile back even on this species, but evergreen zingibers should not be grown outdoors in zone 8. If they survive, they rarily get to the same clump size as the previous year. I'd love to be proven wrong, but so far i haven't and there are great hardy zingibers for zone 8. the midnights and others just need to be kept in greenhouse if you want to grow them in zone 8. It hurts everybody when people promote plants for the wrong zones.

Tim Chapman

I think you are right Tim. I have noticed that the past 2 years there were TONS of it for sale in the box stores and people were just snapping it up and planting it out. I had already trialed it over a winter and found it lacking here in zone 8. This last year and so far this year I have yet to see even one plant for sale here. That's probably a good thing. I hate it when people waste their money on stuff that won't do well where they live.

Fernaly,

I'm embarassed to say I missed the "green" part of your post and had it in my mind that you were growing it in your house! You can pretty much ignore what I said as it pertained to someone growing it as a houseplant.

-Kyle

The problem is that the majority of growers only sell gingers they can source from TC (at least the ones that produce something by the 1000's and sell to the home depots of the world). The TC labs really don't like fooling with deciduous gingers as they often get stuck with trays and trays on dormant plugs that they can't sell year round. soooo evergreen gingers are the way to go. little details like some of them will die in most of the US kinda get lost in the same folder that the royalities owed file got lost in. To be fair though, growers need to do their homework too. The chain stores etc. go by the growers labels and info sheets, and aren't the ones to say 'hey wait is this really suitable for our climate?'

While Midnight is a beautiful plant, its a shame that someone's first experience with a ginger might be something that will die (despite them doing everything they should) because its not hardy. If they don't learn why, that could very easily be the last ginger they ever fool with. If they had bought any of the tons of other hardy species, they might become ginger nuts or at the very least just satisfied with their purchase.

Tim Chapman

I'm a ginger fancier as well, who lives in Michigan, and I learned reading years ago in quite an old book on tropical bulbs and tender bulbs, that despite assurances that gingers could be grown and expected to flower in a single short warm season in the northern U.S., just as cannas and some other tropical bulbs do, the author could never get her butterfly ginger to flower, even if she started it early indoors in a pot and then moved it outdoors for the summer. On the contrary to gingers not flowering indoors, my Costus barbatus grew from a very tiny cutting to a 7ft. plant with many shoots in a 16in. pot and the largest shoot flowered afer a year and a half. It' not flowered since however, and I wonder ,if it's because it got very potbound and has since been divided and divided again. Perhaps they don't like being potbound , nor do they like having the clump disturbed? It could just be a case of finding the right fertilizer for it,since the orginal soil has worn out.
I also grew a small Costus tappenbeckianus from a small cutting and though, thats one of the smallest gingers, it did flower nicely indoors a couple of times. I'd say however, that our summers can often be less than hospitable to the gingers with many cool nights even in summer here.
I've grown them in full sun to part shade and no amount of light seems to make them flower outdoors for me, but they're not especially fast growing either here outdoors, even when they're kept in the pots growing all winter. BTW, they will easily burn when moved into full sun as young plants though the new ones that sprout right in the hot sun don't burn at all , since they're used to the sun from the get-go!!

Tim, I usually water about once every two weeks during the winter months but two to three times a week during the summer months. I fertilize each time I water. I am begining to think I own a dud.