TOPIC: How do you grow your plants for seed production?

Lots of questions.....

Do you grow your \"seed plants\" any different?
I'm thinking of some raised beds with the \"perfect\" soil mixture, loose soil and *maybe* some fertilizer and water.

Has anyone found that seeds grown in the above way produce plants that are less hardy in wild-grown situations?

In the fall of 2010 I made a seed producing bed on a north/east facing hillside not far from my home.

The youtube vid below shows a little of it and some wild roots I harvested to go in it.



I think your best bet would be to have your bed in a location that grows good wild ginseng naturally, rather than trying to simulate a good growing location, or making lots of soil amendments, or providing artificial shade.

Whether you work the ground up or not is really up to you. That would not absolutely be necessary. The plants may grow bigger, stronger if planted in tilled soil, but the roots of course would be adversely affected. In my case I was not really worried about the roots - I was interested in producing good wild seed and I did till (manually) my seed bed.

It would be ideal if your soil had a PH around 5.0 or 5.5 and calcium levels in the 3000+ range.
In my case my PH is OK, but I have to supplement CA by adding Gypsum. Give the plants plenty of room - to discourage disease.

My bed is 14' long and 4' wide and I have 44 wild roots in it.

Below is a pic of my seed bed from last summer.

Good Luck

TNhunter

Thanks for that. I'll watch the video when I have an hour or two to wait for it to download...
I've seen pics here to some of others plants, and they are big, with the flower stalk being taller than the leaves. I've never seen a plant around here over 12\" tall, and the flower stalk is always below the leaves. The wild plants I see are kind pitiful looking, and I never see a big red ball of seeds, always just a few seeds per plant.
I don't know if these things are just local variations or what. But I want big strong plants that bear lots of seed for me to replant, I'm willing to sacrifice some roots to get lots of seed.

POC,
For a seed producing bed I would put them in a raised bed with good drainage.
Go ahead and amend the soil to whatever specifications you need. Since you are growing the plants for seed, don't worry about root size looking too large and cultivated.
It probably wouldn't hurt to throw a little fertilize in the mixture and some copper sulfate to lower the PH. But do this cautiously as not to burn the plants.

In the wild most plants don't have a lot of berries except the much older plants.

rootman

POC,

They way you describe your plants sounds similar to mine around here close to my home.

It is very rare to find a 4 prong in the array of hollows behind my house. Decent 3 prongs is about it and a really nice one would be a 3 prong that was 12-14\" tall and has 10-12 berries.

But now the woods behind my home has big mature timber, deep shade, and the calcium levels are just at the minimum for growing seng (between 1200-1600 mostly). Seng grows there but it does not really thrive like I have seen it thrive in other places.

Here is a pic of of 3 prong that is about the average size of mature ginseng in that location.



I have harvested a many seng plant in those hollows that looked just like that and were 20-25+ years old.

But down where those hollows run into the main hollow (down at the big creek) it changes direction and there is a bluff that faces due east.
The soil there is a different color, and just filled with rock chips, all around that bluff section. Also the seng growing there gets quite a bit of sun, but only in the morning hours. After about noon, they get nothign but indirect light, but until then they get some realy good morning sun.

Along that bluff the seng I find is huge, has big broad leaves, and longer berry stems, and big wads of berries. I found several nice 4 prongs in the 18-24\" tall range.

I will post some pics of them in the next post.

TNhunter

Notice the difference in the leaves (big and broad and rounded) in this nice 3 I found on the bluff...

TNHunter

Here is one of the 4's I found there...

Here is another pic showing off a nice berry pod I found on a nice 3 prong there on that bluff...

Now here is one that shows a 4 prong root, and notice the soil it was growing in...

The soil there is just way different than the soil in the deep shade woods. It is very gray in color and just full of limestone rock chips...

I have not had it tested yet, but I bet the CA levels there are out the roof.

Just look at all the root hairs on that root... obviously very happy with where it is living.

And one last pic from that days hunt...



The 4 smaller roots to the right of that 20.00 came from the deep shade, old timber woods, where the soil is mostly clay, just average woods soil.
Those 4 roots were all 20+ years old, yet notice the size - in the 1/4 oz range.

The roots to the left and below that 20.00, all came off that bluff, and they all looked to be 5-8 years old (based on root neck scars visable).. and they were much larger roots with some in the 1.5 and 1.2 oz range.

I think the location was just about ideal there for seng.

I have found seng on a few other north to east facing bluffs around here and it always looks like that, just big and very healthy, growing like crazy.

If you could reproduce conditions like that in your seed producing location - no doubt you would have great success.

Good Luck to You!

TNhunter