TOPIC: GROWING for a LIVING (who actually can do it ? )

I don't know if 600 ft is needed, but I believe that if introduction of disease is a concern then common sense would indicate that it would be more than 20 feet.

I agree with you completely 5. Maybe I didn't get the full concept of the discussion. Lets say there is a small woodlot that is 1200 ft across....and just one single 'wild' plant grows right in the middle. You would not be able to every plant wild sim or any other flavor of ginseng in that whole section of ground. A total waste in my opinion.

Latt, I don't know how big the seed business really is, honestly. I know I sold less than 200 pounds this year, and some sell less than that. I don't have my reference material in front of me to look up seed production per acre in ginseng farming operations. But, I do know they plant between 75 and 100 pounds per acre. So, I'm sort of leaning toward beleiving that seed sales to folks like you and I are incidental to producing the seed they need to plant each year. --and for the record...I sold for $80 a pound for the past several years and this year the price increased to $85/lb for seed that germination tested at 92%.

We do need to be cautious and let us try to keep wild simulated as wild as possible even if that means only 10% survival rate after 10 years if you are lucky. If you want to fertilize and spray then have you some plots of woodsgrown. Pretty simple.

rootman

BCastle and others,
I know there are many good seed suppliers out their like you and there are others. Sorry to sound skeptical in my previous post. I know not everyone is trying to make a killing off seed sales. Lets face it too, buying low and re-selling as high as possible is not illegal or immoral. So I am not trying to throw anyone under the bus.

I just know that many seeds are being sold out there for a high price that are field grown shade cultivated seeds. I am not even saying that the secondary sellers are misrepresenting the seed as something presumably better like wild simulated or woods cultivated. Some secondary suppliers have even told me they think the seeds are wild simulated or woods cultivated but they are only going by what is told to them when they buy it from the primary seed suppliers and they cannot guarantee it.

It's just interesting that many of us from many different states suspected we bought green seed last year and we bought from many different seed suppliers. So it's almost proof of how these seeds are sold and dispersed to multiple suppliers.

Thousands upon thousands of pounds of seed are sold annually. It's big business and many seeds are sold to ginseng seed farmers. I still suspect thousands of pounds are sold to fellas like all of us on this forum.

There have been so many post on green seed, wild simulated verses field cultivated and price verses presumed quality.

I simply look for the best seed possible at the best price from suppliers that have earned my trust and hope for the best.
Latt

No worries Latt.

I've had issues with seed too. One of the things I would advise against is storing them in the refrigerator. Think about how nature takes care of seed: 1) Fall off the plant in the autumn with often little or no moisture until the leaves fall 2) go through seasonal change to freezing 3) seasonal change to warm weather in often dry conditions 4) change back to freezing before finally emerging the following spring.

I think if we were to put an unnatual near freezing period in there, it might mess up the cycle and force a delayed emergence.

bcastle, first off let me say congradulations i notice that you finally have your karma rating up to zero..
im gonna give ya a thumbs up for being a good sport.

i think that i found a link that will give everyone a good insight as to dormancy, stratification and seed banks, after reading it tell me if anyone thinks that the current stratification methods are missing an element? pay attention to the paragraph(s) referring to hard seed. Its only 2 pages but it is absolutly full of information.
thanks guys.

www.uky.edu/Ag/Horticulture/kytreewebsit.../Dormant%20seeds.pdf

BCastle wrote:

No worries Latt.

I've had issues with seed too. One of the things I would advise against is storing them in the refrigerator. Think about how nature takes care of seed: 1) Fall off the plant in the autumn with often little or no moisture until the leaves fall 2) go through seasonal change to freezing 3) seasonal change to warm weather in often dry conditions 4) change back to freezing before finally emerging the following spring.

I think if we were to put an unnatual near freezing period in there, it might mess up the cycle and force a delayed emergence.

I have to agree with BCastle on not storing stratified seed in the refridgerator. I don't have any scientific proof and goes against some of the conventional wisdom on the subject, but if that seed has already gone through a cold period and in a lot of cases has just emerged from that cold period then it only makes sense that they need that warm peiod for the embryo to grow. This fall is the first time that I have not refridgerated seed to store it until planting and I'll be happy to share results on here next spring. But one thing that I have noticed \"quite accidently by the way\" is that those embryo's have continued growing while not refridgerated. This came about as I went through a 2 ounce bag of seed (I had all of my seed seperated into 2 ounce bags) and took all of the smiling ones out to do a test planting of just smiling seed. The remaining seed in that bag did not get planted until about 2 weeks later at which time I was trying out an improvised single seed planter of sorts. Anyways I noticed while planting that I had quite a few smiling seeds in the bag. I'm sure a few were probably missed, but during the initial seperation I was very thourough and Know that I had not missed that many. I still have what is left from that second planting and even more are smiling now. The point of all of this is that it is clear that the embryo continues to grow at room temp (This is a mud room which isn't very well insulated so the average temp was probably closer to 60 degrees than it was to 70 as it did cool down some at night). I don't yet know how many will emerge in the spring or how they will do, but I definately know that the embryos of this particular batch of seed continued to grow at room temp. I'll know more in the spring, but to this point have seen favorable results from not refridgerating.

K_duce wrote:

bcastle, first off let me say congradulations i notice that you finally have your karma rating up to zero..
im gonna give ya a thumbs up for being a good sport.

i think that i found a link that will give everyone a good insight as to dormancy, stratification and seed banks, after reading it tell me if anyone thinks that the current stratification methods are missing an element? pay attention to the paragraph(s) referring to hard seed. Its only 2 pages but it is absolutly full of information.
thanks guys.

www.uky.edu/Ag/Horticulture/kytreewebsit.../Dormant%20seeds.pdf

Well, thanks I guess. I didn't know my rating was ever below zero, and when I first noticed it, it was as it is now...1.

Interesting article, thank you. We can see ginseng seems to have several of those characteristics which follow what we have seen in the past few years. That being that seed once out of the stratification box, can withstand much drier conditions than we had previously believed.

5prong's observation made me remember a pound of seed that I didn't get in the ground before freezing weather. The whole bag (maybe one or two seeds were the exception) sprouted right there in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer. So there I am in EARLY FEBRUARY with a pound of ginseng seed with 1/4\" tails trying to plant them in still half frozen ground. This did not go well.

This is why I tell everyone to plant in the fall the odds are agaist you in the spring. But, this might be an interesting experiment for those of you who are exploring the properties of ginseng seed germination. Say if you were to keep 100 seeds in the fridge and keep them from completely drying out, and observe what happens and then compare those with the results from the planted seed.

I sure hope you all decide soon whether lying to a customers face about your products authenticity is a benefit to your business or not.!
If planting wild seed or field cultivated seed does'nt matter to any one, then why is the price of field roots 4 years of age only $15 a kilo... a kilo...this year and some are getting close to $500 a pound for wild? Some one is gettin the shaft, and it will be everyone if you don't stop trying to cut corners in your busines and planting the cultivated seed in place of the real wild seed.
Do you think the customer is stupid??? How long will he continue to pay wild prices if he knows you sell him cultivated thats worth 5 bucks a pound and call it wild.

Asia is fast becoming self sustainable in it's own field grown roots, wild roots are non existent. So they look to North America for roots similar to their wild root.This made a few ritch back in the 17 hundreds, and many still rely on the seasonal harvest for an income.

Now along comes the guy who read on the internet that you can plant this seed here and call it that and sell it to them for more,Oboy!...and never mind if it's moral!?You probably don't care about that either?
Your customer has stopped buying from the States in the past for poor quality and misrepresentation of the product.
They are not buying your seed now because they can grow enough for themselves. They are growing woods grown, but wild is only from the East.IF THEY WANT WILD ROOTS GROWN FROM CULTIVATED SEED,WOULDN'T THEY STOP COMING TO THE SMALL TOWNS OF NORTH AMERICA EVERY FALL AND GROW THEIR OWN.???
If I was in your shoes I would protect the integrity of this long enjoyed practice of collecting wild plants,and not try to come up with a cheaper in the short term idea of what you think they want.
If you grow wild then it's wild if you grow any form of cultivated then it's cultivated!!! If your long used seed provider does not know or is unsure of the authenticity then beleive me it is not real wild.
Sellers of the real thing are proud of their product, they have fought weather and animals, hand picked every seed, carried it back home from the deep bush, prepared it for sratification and then next season dug it up and put it on the market. When you ask him where it came from... you'll know.

The customer wants the wild properties.!

guy

this 600ft zone is the wisdom of our wonderful provincial(state)athority. on the topic of wild vs cultivated.

it's just me ranting at the intelligence of my governments polices.


guy

Guy,I totally agree on the wild verses the woodsgrown. The Asians are some of the smartest people on earth and they will refuse to buy these fast grown roots that has been fertilized.

They are looking for roots with necks at least 15 years or older.

Now I have planted stratified seed and let mother nature take its course. It is self thinning and to be honest survival rates aren't that good. I've got plants 15 years old that I won't dig because the longer I can wait, the better quality root I'll have.

rootman