TOPIC: Spring planting

Anyone planning on doing any spring planting? If so, when and where are getting your seed?

mhowa

I've tried spring planting in the past. It was disasterous. Most of the seed is sold and planted in the fall (nature's timing too), and the seed left over is not normally in good condition or already will have tails.

mhowa,
See my post I made the other day under \"Ginseng Seeds' if you are interested. The Key to spring planting is to make sure you get the seeds in ASAP in Feb and March if possible. Early April is OK but after that I have had little luck compared to Fall planting. Try to get the seed 1/2'' to 3/4'' under the soil surface with a good leaf litter mulch layer covering the beds and you will get better germination. If you can plant prior to an expected rain a day or two after planting this will help as well.
Good luck,
Latt

I planted a pound last month, in the treeline behind my home. However, I intend to avoid spring planting this year.

I know there are those that claim to have great success with spring planting. However it is agreed by most on this site that spring planting is less than desirable.
I would try it if the seed was cheap. I mean really cheap. I am not sure what the seed suppliers do with the seed if they get stuck with it and cannot sell it in the spring. I would buy some of that seed knowing the success rate for spring planting is poor in my opinion as most of you agree. But if the seed was really really cheap per pound I would buy some and plant it.
I know some seed suppliers save a little seed for their customers that buy in the spring. One supplier that sells out each fall saves some just to make sure he has some each year for his customers that buy each spring. Kind of risky to save seed that could be sold in the fall but he says he gets what he saves over sold in the spring.
Latt
Latt

I also didn't have the best of luck with spring planting last season but, the seed were from a different source than what I planted in the fall. Last summer I bought all my seed early, float tested ,treated and reburied them in a stratification box back in the woods until I was ready to plant. Hoping for better results. Finished planting yesterday, hardly any at all floated and every seed was about to burst wide open. A big difference in appearance compared to the seed planted last year.

Hillhopper

Latt wrote:

mhowa,
See my post I made the other day under \"Ginseng Seeds' if you are interested. The Key to spring planting is to make sure you get the seeds in ASAP in Feb and March if possible. Early April is OK but after that I have had little luck compared to Fall planting. Try to get the seed 1/2'' to 3/4'' under the soil surface with a good leaf litter mulch layer covering the beds and you will get better germination. If you can plant prior to an expected rain a day or two after planting this will help as well.
Good luck,
Latt

I agree completely with Latt, best if in the ground by mid-march, if you buy your seed in the fall then go ahead and build you a stratification box and place your seeds back in the ground until late january, when you put the seed back in the box make sure that you use alternate layers of sand and seed and dont allow your seed to clump together or make your seed layers very thick. also put some heavy duty poly rope under your box or even some chian, it is very hard to pull a 150 to 200 lb box of sand out of the ground after it has been buried for the winter. After you pull your box up and want to seperate the seed from the sand a fairly quick method will be to use a spegetti noodle strainer and a tub of water. fill the tub up with water and use the noodle strainer to dip out the seed and sand then lower the strainer into the tub of water and the sand will fall out of the drain holes and any bad seed will float off to the top of the tub of water.

Good Luck
K_duce

K_duce, on that line of thought, a trick I learned was to pre-sift your sand through the same strainer before you put the seeds in there. That way, you won't have largers pices of rock mixing in with your seeds because they won't fit through the holes of the strainer.