TOPIC: Berry update from seed producing bed 07-02-2011

If I find seng w/ those ferns the ferns are in small patches and definately underneath some sugar maple.

You mentioned jewell weed. We have it taking over entire areas of woods and seng will not grow anymore. We went to check out an escarpment that an old timer used to dig. All jewell weed, 100's of acres. We searched for hours and nothing. The trees and everything else was perfect.

Do you know why it's called jewell weed? Pick one and stick it under water. It glistens and kinda looks like the silver paper from a stick of juicy fruit gum!

Latt,

I did a image search on spicebush and found this one...



I do see that growing in and around where we find seng in the fall and best I remember it has red berries about the same time that seng does, perhaps just a bit later here.

On the MHF, I can tell by where I find it growing that it likes mineral rich soil, probably specifically calcium rich soil. Often find it near rocky outcroppings around here, and on those big limestone bluffs down by the creek bottoms, all around the bottom of those blufs where the soil is just filled with rock chips, man the MHF grows big and stout and happy looking.

So does the seng.

Maya - on the seed producing bed.

What I did was I took my grubbing hoe and I worked up a 8' wide by 14' long bed area. I broke it up 4-5\" deep with that grub hoe, and then I raked that that loose top soil up to the center area to make it a raised bed.

It was still 14' long but then only 4' wide.

That also left a low - ditch like area - on both sides of the bed - which work well for drainage.

The soil in my area is not ideal, mostly loam/clay and is low on calcium so I then added supplements to the soil.

I went down to one of my favorite ginseng hunting spots - find just huge healthy stands of seng in this area - and I got 6 - 5 gal buckets (30 gal total) of that rock chip filled soil from that place and I put it on top of my seed producing bed.

I also added some gypsum (calcium) and a little bonemeal (calcium & phosphorous) and a little epson salt (magnesium & other trace minerals) worked that all into the top 4-5\" of the soil.

Then I added on top of that a real nice layer of mulch in the form of composted peat (100 lbs of that).

Then I took some old dry wall (gypsum board) that I had left over from when we built our house and I cut them up in 3\" wide strips, 4' long. and I put them on top of the bed and pinn'd in place with sticks. I spaced them out down the bed so that each row of roots I planted would have a strip of gypsum board just avove it and another just below it.

I then planted the roots in rows.

Near the end of the hunting season last year, I would just seng hunt as usual, but I carried two bags. My regular seng bag, and then another smaller bag that I took special care of.

When I found a nice 4 or 3, I would dig it real careful, and make sure not to damage the bud for next years top, then put it in that bag and include a handfull of dirt/leaf mulch with it and I kept that bag nice and moist. I would dip it in the creek or drench it with some of my drinking watter occasionally to keep the roots in good shape.

Then as I returned home, I would plant those wild roots in the bed just as I found them in the woods. I tried to get the set so that the bud spur was about 2\" deep under that nice mulch of composted peat.

After I had it all planted, I put on top of that a nice layer of mapel leaf mulch.

I planted 44 roots total, and this spring 42 of them sent up tops, 2 did not.

I hope those 2 will come up next spring.

TNhunter

Here is a couple of pics I took while making that seed bed.

It was bad dry here late last fall when I was making it. The pic below shows it after I had added that 30 gal of rock chip filled soil to the bed.

Here is one that shows it when I was near finished.

I had put on the dry wall strips and the composted peat at this point.

Before I even got finished making it, I found deer and turkey tracks in the bed, so I put up a chicken wire fence around the bed to discourage them from getting into my bed. So far that has worked well.

Now here is what the bed looked like last weekend on June 24.



TNhunter