TOPIC: Harvest success or failures?

BCastle Was your first planting a wild sim planting? If so can you tell us how many made it to a harvestable size? It doesn't seem like that many members on here have been planting for over ten years. If they have then I sure haven't seen any results posted. I know that conventional wisdom says 10% survival if you're lucky. I guess I'd just like to hear some actual figures from guys who actually planted wild sim plantings 8 or more years ago. If you see this perhaps you should start another thread. I'm not wanting to hijack this thread.

5, my first planting was not wild simulated. I planted berries in places and wondered why they didn't come up the next spring, and transplanted wild plants only to have them come up and then die for a while there. Finally, I got online and found a website about ginseng and sent an email. The guy or gal (I have long lost the email to a computer crash and have no idea who it was) on the other end explained my issues. Ginseng didnt come up the spring after, and it didn't look like the mature plants when it did. Also, it needed semi dense shade to survive. After that, I started slow with a few ounces in a shady spot in my garden. After that worked, I started planting in the woods.

I didn't really start planting wild sim until about 6 years or so ago. I've not harvested anything out of there yet, but I did go back in a couple years later and replant right over the first planting and added some new area to the 'patch'.

Until last year, things were going very well. Lots of small three prongs in that section and berries too. They cut my primary shade trees though and that whole section grew up terribly. I'll cut the remaining tree tops off the ginseng this fall yet as I still see a lot of yellow leaves under the tall growth that sprang up.

This was a good idea for a thread 5prong. I'm really interested in hearing what others are seeing in their wild sim patchs.

I started planting wild simulated 5 lbs. in 1995 and averaged about 4 lbs. seed planting each year. Yes ,I was hoping to make a nice return but I soon found out just how hard it was to get ginseng to live. I started digging some of mine about 5 years ago to actually pay for my seed That I had bought over the years. My total investment in seed about $3000. I'm not going to count my labor. I've been digging 2 lbs. a year \"some of the biggest\" for the past 5 years for a total of about 10 lbs. so I am starting to turn a profit and should increase each year. I plant the berries and still order seed each year if nothing else to plant in real remote areas.

rootman

Newbie mistakes I what I expereinced this past year. What came up, stayed healthy until recent frost. I dug a few roots for inspection and they looked robust. Lots of tendrils out from the main root, and about2\" long... I was happy with that.

I have a tremendous deer problem, however am going to put a hurt on them this fall.

We learn as we go, eh?

Thanks for your replies guys. I think it is a good thing to get to see some actual results. I've been planting berries for many years. Years ago I just planted the berries while I was out digging. The past 3 years I have actually gotten out in a couple of areas before digging season comes in and have planted a lot of berries. They definately aren't all ripe at this time of year, but I am usually able to find quite a lot of ripened berries by the end of august. I figure that getting those berries under about an inch of soil increase their odds by 500%
Anyways.. I've actually had pretty good success with these plantings germinating. I could not give accurate percentages as most of these berries are just planted here and there. I have marked a few of these plantings though and have seen quite a few emerge and survive 1 or 2 growing seasons.

Last fall I ordered some stratified seed and planted just 1/4 lb of seed. At the time I did not know anything about checking for embryo growth (but have since learned thanks to this forum), but I did notice at the time that I could not find any 'smiling' seeds. I honestly don't know if it was a problem with the seed, or possibly because it was so stinking dry around here a year ago, but probably only about 10% or so made an appearance this spring. I'm hoping that more from that initial planting make an appearance next spring, but don't have extremely high hopes.
This fall I ordered one pound of seed from another scource. I sold 1/4 lb of that to a buddy for what I had in it. I have planted the other 3/4 lb actually in 4 different areas. I Have much higher hopes for this years plantings. The seed looks better with a lot of smiling seed and the weather has kept the gound from drying out since planting.

This fall I also tranplanted about 150 mature \"wild\" plants to this one hillside where there was already \"wild\" ginseng growing. These were not planted all in one patch, but just scattered around in groups of 4 or 5 with at least 12 inch spacing. I am using this as a seed producing area. (The previous 2 years I had transplanted about a total of about 20 roots to another area with less Ideal growing conditions just to see how they would do and have had good success with them so far)

I have not had the soil tested nor have I added any type of supplement to the soil. I am fortunate that my planting sites are in areas that although may not be considered ideal, are still very good with lots of companion plants and all of them are relatively close(in the same hollow) to patches of presumably wild ginseng.

This is my growing story thus far....

I got a chance to get out yesterday between showers and went by that first wild sim patch that I mentioned earlier. I was cutting brush and tree tops, and was surprised to see a little two-prong still visible laying on the ground. I uncovered it enough to check the growth and took a few pictures.


http://www.emeraldcastlefarms.com/pictures/wildsim2_wide.jpg


http://www.emeraldcastlefarms.com/pictures/wildsim2_close.jpg

I was pretty happy with this root. It is at least four and maybe six years old. Not the biggest, but certainly excellent in shape. I added the direct urls if you want to take a closer look.

BCastle - Looks pretty good to me. I was surprised that you found anything still standing this late.