Ginger is a real challenge here in Central Oklahoma. I've been working on it for several years, and I have some growing plants after many efforts, but it is not happy in this climate. It wants tropical conditions at every stage of its life cycle -- warmer than 80 degrees, very moist air, and not much exposure to wind.
To start with, much ginger root that you buy from the store will never sprout at all. "They" say it's been sprayed with a sprouting inhibitor chemical, so buy organic; but my
experience is that the organic stuff often won't pop shoots either.
So, for starters, don't plant roots unless you find them already popping the green knobs of new growth before you buy them in the grocery store.
I then discovered that "room temperature" isn't warm enough for young ginger plants in the wintertime. If your house is at 72 degrees, moist soil will be a few degrees colder due to evaporation and whatnot; your ginger will rot long before it sends out new roots. Just not warm enough.
I had to put an electric blanket under an empty fish tank, and keep my ginger starts in the (covered) fish tank with an open bowl of
water also in there, just to get a mini tropical hothouse situation to get the plants started.
They want to be moist but if the soil gets too wet, and especially if it is too cool, the ginger stems will rot and the plant will die.
Plants grown indoors like this are exquisitely fragile and very difficult to "harden off" so that they will survive when taken outside into Oklahoma spring or summer conditions.
I had some in a tub interplanted with mint summer before last, that survived the trip outside. They grew very poorly in the dry windy heat that prevails here, but they did survive the summer. They didn't produce/enlarge their roots though.
I took them inside and kept them all winter in a little artificial enclave I have indoors that's warm and brightly lit with
LED lights, including some plant
lights. About half of them rotted off and died because I messed up the
watering and their soil got too damp or cool or both.
The survivors I planted outdoors this past summer in a metal pot, very well drained. This year they put up a lot of foliage, but still did not increase their roots. They are back inside; but once again, only about half of them survived the transition and I'm by no means certain any will survive the winter.
Ginger is hard, here. I hope to figure out a situation and method to get some plants to explode during the summer and make some fat roots. But I'm like, four years into the effort, and I haven't managed it yet.