TOPIC: Seed Bed Disaster - new plantings - some wild seng

Oh well Guys...

Some hard knocks for the first year seng grower here in Middle TN.

Figure we might as well share the bad times too - perhaps others will learn by it.

We have had a brutal drought with extreme high temps most of July and into August.

My seed bed was looking good Mid July, had to water a few times, but at that point it was looking decent. Had lots of berry pods full of green berries. I checked on it again last weekend (and watered again) and noticed first that my little 3 prong (in a spot just around the hill from my seed bed)- that I started from a small 2 prong root a couple years ago had expired and all of the other 9 plants around that area were gone.

Here is what my little 3 prong looked like today.




Now that is a real BUMMER !

I collected 3 of the larger green berries and will plant them just to give them a chance.

TNhunter

Last year that little 3 prong did not even yellow until Mid Sept, but this year it was a goner by first of August.

I did have a tree that was just west of that spot that died - no leaves this year - and that let more evening sun in and well that did them in I think.

I am going to dig those 10 little roots up and move them to better spot this fall.

Now below is what my seed bed plants look like now.

Not bad but a few of them have expired too - originally had 42 tops up, now have 37 still up.

Now here is the bad news on the seed bed.

Below looks like it will be my total harvest of berries this year.

One Red Berry !

I found it laying on the ground today.

Last weekend I still had seed pods full of green berries with I think around 15 or 20 that were red.

This weekend all of my seed pods look like this.

Empty !



Look down below that empty seed pod to the ground and you will see a pile of what looks like shredded berry/seed remains there.

Last weekend they were berrys on pods, this weekend they are piles of eaten berries remains under each plant.

Here is another...

Dang varmit - some of these berry remains look to be from both red and green berries.

Oh well - live and learn I guess.

It obviously would have been wise to have put out some rodent poison the past few weeks as those berry pods were filling up with berries.

Nothing at all had bothered them up until this point and I was not really expecting anything to until most of the berries turned red.

I think I will transplant about half of these mature seed bed roots out to some place in the wild (on my other property) and space them out well on a hillside.

That will at least diversify my seed bed root plantings some and give me a better chance of actually collecting those berries next year.

TNhunter

Now on to the new plantings.

I went out and checked on my 3 leafers today to see how they were doing.

I expected that they would be really stressed out and many expired from the heat and dry.

First here is some pics from wild ginseng that is growing in the same hollow that I planted in.

This hot/dry spell has been hard on the wild stuff too.



Last time that I was in this hollow there were 3 smallish 3 prongs in this same location that I could not find any evidence of today. Completely gone. Not sure if they were browsed or if they just expired from the heat a few weeks back and I could not find them.

The lil 3 prong above is all but a goner and has a couple green berries on it. I am going to check on it again soon and hope they turn red and I will plant them if they do.

Here is some more young wild seng from that same location.

Looking sad.

Here's another bunch of young wild seng looking sad...