TOPIC: Lots of yellow plants

Season opened today in Indiana. I went out early this morning and found only yellow plants. I have never seen ginseng die off this early. I guess it is just so dry that evrything is dieing off. I didn't find much ginseng even in places I scouted earlier in the year. It is gone or yellow.

jc,

Sorry to hear that, but hope you will get to harvest some nice ones before they are all gone.

The dry/hot mid summer here made it hard on our seng to. We probably saw 500-600 plants on Mondays dig, but only 3-4 yellow ones. We have had some decent rain the past month or so that I think helped ours hang in there, but the hot/dry june/early july seems to have made our seng produce fewer berries and I have seen a bunch of seng that had no berries at all.

I don't think they just fell off and are gone, I just don't think they set fruit.

I have a little patch just off the back yard - some small 2 prong roots I transplanted last fall. Some of them are small 3 prongs this year and they had flower spikes, bloomed, but never set on berries.

TNhunter

Here in my part of Ohio there are lots of yellow and wilted plants too. Very discouraging to find so many dying off on the first day a seng season.

yeah im seeing alot of yellow plants here in east kentucky too. mostely in areas with more sun and dryer dirt. it still seems to be doing good though where its darker and wetter. still have alot in those places that the berries arent even ripe yet

TNhunter wrote:

jc,

Sorry to hear that, but hope you will get to harvest some nice ones before they are all gone.

The dry/hot mid summer here made it hard on our seng to. We probably saw 500-600 plants on Mondays dig, but only 3-4 yellow ones. We have had some decent rain the past month or so that I think helped ours hang in there, but the hot/dry june/early july seems to have made our seng produce fewer berries and I have seen a bunch of seng that had no berries at all.

I don't think they just fell off and are gone, I just don't think they set fruit.

I have a little patch just off the back yard - some small 2 prong roots I transplanted last fall. Some of them are small 3 prongs this year and they had flower spikes, bloomed, but never set on berries.

TNhunter

Very intersting Tn

Yeah 5prong, that's how it looks down here too. Went further west yesterday, a couple of counties over and the ginseng looked normal. but your picture is exactly what we're finding down here.

good news for day 2. I went in a woods i have been in before but thought it was pretty much dug out. sometimes i have this attitude that i know where seng grows and where it doesn't and if I think the place don't look good I don't look. but today I just thought, what the hell.... the first plant i found was a huge 4 pronger with a berry cluster the size of a golf ball. while i was down there digging i saw 8 more four prongers in the same area. i dug steady for about 2 hours. And, happy to report, i only found one yellow plant.

I've been digging like a mad fool the past couple of days here in South Central Indiana, and judging by the amount of yellow plants I have seen, it's going to be a short season. It's been my experience so far that the higher you get on the hills, the more yellow or completely burned up the seng is. If I'm looking for green, I have to head to the bottoms where it's a little more moist and cooler. I can't remember seeing the woods this dry. On a good note, I went out this afternoon ang got into \"green briar heaven\". The yellow seng really stood out in those patches. I should take pictures of my arms too. I'm so scratched up I thought I was going to need a blood transfusion when I got home!

went up a holler today. i know there had to be alot of seng in there but it already died. every plant on the hillside was wilting. cohosh was jus layed over and turning black. i know that holler stays wet but the dirt was the driest ive ever saw. very heartbreaking. its been so dry

Don't ge too discouraged. like I said I have been to several spots here in Indiana and found some pretty healthy plants. The first spot looked like a flora disaster with everything dieing off. I think we're alright, I remember finding some pretty yellow plants last year in the first week of September. Also, I have plants on my farm that never make it past the middle of August but come May there up and healthy. The spot i went to yesterday was at the bottom of a huge hill around an old dried out creek bed and there were some great plants there. I just think that each spot will differ from the previous one. Some will be good, some bad. Everything starts to really die out around the third week of October.