I too had a run of bad seed luck one year. Lesson learned, reliable source found and sticking with it until Im producing my own. Most suppliers order a certain quantity and pass them along with out the knowledge or care of how they were handled prior. You see, cultivated farmers always use their best seed (which only makes sense) and sell the seed that may have came from a diseased area. They stratify good seed and they stratify bad seed, but hold them separately. Maybe you get lucky and get good seed and maybe not. It is hard to imagine someone with 100lb of possible disease prone seed just throwing them out when such a profit can be made. That's not to mention how stratification was handled.... Letting them get too dry also causes delayed emergence and whether or not they used proper fungicides to ward off diseases during the process also makes a huge difference. You are at the mercy of the grower first then your retail supplier second. Tricky business, this seed selling.
I more or less have a fairly intimate relationship to my plantings. During the growing season Im there at least a couple times a week. I am not so certain of the term \"self thinning\", I usually see what has done the thinning when a plant fails and before it disappears. Any plant is no different than humans when disease comes calling, if you were to cram 50 people in a 10x10 room and one gets sick, guess what happens...Also,Everything wants your ginseng! Be it deer,turkey,invasive weeds, rhizoctonia, phytopthora, alternaria, voles and last but not least; man wants it as well. When I fall behind on my maintenance schedule I see exactly what has happened, when I do as planned then all is usually well other than the notorious woodland vole. I have tried baiting and it helps some but not completely. I went through a restricted chemical class a few weeks back so I can now use bait that will more or less knock em dead when they smell of it. There will now be a wide spread extermination of my whole property or they had better begin their exodus very soon. Little did I know, cultivated farmers expect this before planting and have certain protocols using these baits to rid the entire area. From what I've seen, if you aren't able to do regular maintenance on a planting then you had better spread them babies out.
And also.....Any potential grower expecting to make money hand over fist and not work at this endeavor had best not fall prey to the lure of riches from the Ginseng seed salesman. It's like everything else, it's hard to get anything out of it unless you put yourself into it.. literally.
Hillhopper
