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For some years we grew sugarcane in North Florida. We'd plant it in November, burying it about 6" deep in trenches, then it would come up in spring. Growing sugarcane is easy. All you need is a good hunk of sugarcane with a few intact nodes (those are the joints in the cane). Since sugarcane is usually harvested in the fall, that’s the time you’re likely to see the canes for sale. Most grocery stores don’t carry sugarcane, but a lot of farm stands do in the fall—and fall is when you want to plant, at least in North Florida. Buy a couple of stout canes (they’re usually 5–6 feet long with about 8–12 nodes, depending on the cultivar), and you’re well on your way. When you get home, cut your canes into segments with at least 3–4 nodes each, pick a good spot to plant them, then put those pieces on their sides about 4–6 inches down, and cover them up well.

All winter, those pieces will sit down there in the ground until the soil warms up in the spring. When I planted sugarcane in a North Florida November, the plants would pop up for me sometime in March or April. We're doing the same thing here, but planting sugar cane in Alabama. For each cane you bury, you’ll usually get a couple of good shoots emerging from the ground. If you really don’t want to trust the earth to take care of your little baby sugarcane plants, you can just stick some chunks of cane in pots with a node or two beneath the dirt and keep them someplace that doesn’t freeze, like a sunroom. They’ll grow. When my baby sugarcane plants appeared in the spring and I was sure it wasn't going to freeze again I would fertilize them with chicken manure. You can also use lawn fertilizer. (They’re a grass—they like lots of nitrogen.) Throughout the summer they’ll get nice and tall and sometime in July or August you’ll really see the canes starting to thicken up, but don’t chop them yet (unless you really can’t stand to wait). In North Florida and the Deep South, wait until it’s just about time for the first frost of fall or winter, then go cut the canes down so you’ll get the largest harvest possible. If you don’t cut them down and you get a freeze, you’re going to lose all the above ground growth and you may even lose the plants. Harvest by cutting the canes down close to the ground, and then put the sugarcane roots to bed for the winter by mulching over them with some rough material. Leaves are good for this, but probably any mulch would work fine. My sugarcane came back even when I barely mulched over the roots. In its second year, sugarcane will bunch out and usually give you a few more canes than it did the first year.

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