Panamenos are marvelous gardenes, but with a catch; ONLY regarding plants with which they are familiar. Turmeric is Asisn, so, translated from the Spanish, fuhgeddaboudit.
BTW, you can probably grow your own ginger (turmeric is a diffrent proposition). Pick the warmest spot in your garden, when things get cool, cover the plot with hay/straw. Lots of sun, please, and keep it moist (NOT SOGGY!) Ginger, like turmeric, is a rhyzome, so check with Shaw's Garden in STL on when to bury it.
You should be able to buy rhyzomes from any good plant centre. They WILL try (at least they do here) to rip you off on rhyzomes; I just tell the bleeps that I grow herbs they've never heard of, and I'll pay you a buck apiece (the dollar IS the currency here), and if they even hesitate, I walk out .... I've had a couple of them follow me out the door--they know a buck apiece is fair.
Anyway, ginger and turmeric are the easiest plants to grow that I've ever tried in a warm climate. Just plant 'em and forget 'em unless things start to get dry. Do call Shaw's Garden for tips in Missouri.
No micro-planer? No problem. A fine wood file works very well. Just keep it dry. Blenders? MAYBE. Very sharp blades only. Trying to cut up turmeric with a knife, even a sharp one, is a hobby only for folks in the gulag on a 20-year sentence (try it, you'll see!)
Bonus: ginger blooms attract some species of butterflies. Don't know about turmeric; my plants haven't bloomed yet.
Well, I was thinking about maybe trying to grow some ginger, but hadn’t got around to checking out the requirements to see if it would grow in Mo.
Since most Tumeric is grown in the areas similar in climate to India, I didn’t think it would be something to try here. I like to take the capsules, since the spice dyes every thing yellow.