TOPIC: Goin' to the mountains this weekend!

Latt

Congrats, on the plantings that are coming up well.

It's good to hear that.

I'm sure that \"wets your Appetite\" for more!

classicfur

Latt,

Sounds like your planting where you had very poor germination may be similar to what happened to me with one of my batches of seeds (1/2 lb I got from Hardings - his wild strain seed).

Less than 1% actually germinated.

When I got the seed in, some had 1/4\" tails and a few were cracked - they looked good to me. Float tested good and I planted them within 2-3 days of recieving and kept them in the fridge until planted.

About the second week in May all of my other beds had 3 leafers up everywhere - but not the beds I planted the hardings seed in. Some were up but just a very few. In one bed that is 5x50 I counted round 25 3 leavers up and that was it.

I scratched around under the leaves and down in the top soil and found 4 seeds and they all still looked good - solid. When split open they were white on the inside and they were not showing signs of sprouting (not cracked, no tails).

It looks like they are just going to wait another year before sprouting.

That's not good - but I suppose it is better than finding out I had diseased seeds and they all just rotted.

Whitjr - enjoy your trip to the Mountains.

I am visiting the Mountains in East TN this weekend and early next week - taking the Wife and Kids for a mini-vacation to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area.

My wife has it all planned out per what he kids want to do - Dollywood, Wonderworks, some Magic show, etc...

I would love to get up there in the mountains and just look around for some seng, but doubt that will happen.

Hope you have a great trip and find your seng doing extremely well !

TNhunter

Back from my great hike in the Linville Gorge... it was quite a climb down to the river, elevation at the parking area was 4228 ft, and the river was at elevation 1710. the climb out was along the same steep trail [this WILL be revised next time] was grueling. I took lots of photos, and really enjoyed the whole thing.

After careful inspection of the gensing beds, I'm not too happy with the germination rate/emergance of the plantings. I counted every three-leafer in each bed. This is a bit like counting stars in the sky.... however not nearly as many. I wanted to have some numbers to do the math with.

These statistics are very useful to me as a relative newcomer to this project, and also very relative to my whole idea of the project.

We bought seed from 2 sources, totaling 3 lbs from one and 1 lb from another. We bought 300 3yr old rootlets as well.

All rootlets are up, looking good , except for the few that have been deer browsed. Many have five prongs on them, however aren't very tall. Note to self: pick a great oak there to hang a tree stand and hunt the offending animals soon!

The math is a bit depressing... 3% of the three pounds are above ground. and 4 % of the one pound are above ground.

It's possible, as some have suggusted on this forum, that the emergance isn't complete. The three-leafers started coming up around the 2nd week in April, and now it's mid-May. Perhaps there will be more in a couple of weeks; I can certainly hope so. At least I have a great count of the progress thus far, so when I return there I'll know about the new starts.

another problem was that I have a new camera. I took lots of photos of everything that was up. However when I uploaded these to my home computer, the iPhoto program had a belch and I think I've lost them all. There's more to do that later... maybe, just maybe, I can reclaim them somehow.

As Garrison Keeler says: \"Thats the news from Lake Woebegone!\"

I found the photos! Yeah! Will upload some of them tonight....

Well somewhat good news on my ginseng beds that I had posted about. These are the ones that did not germinate well. These were the 5 lbs we planted where my buddy reported on only 500 plants that came up out of 5 lbs planted. Well I drove up there this morning and just got back. We are at 20% germination which is terrible, but that sure beats only 500 plants out of 5 lbs planted that he reported about earlier.

Good news is the seeds that did not sprout are still alive. They are 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep in the soil. I was able to find them when I looked for them by brushing back the leaves and poking around in the soil. The unopened seeds were still white, fresh and firm inside.
So I am now convinced the majority of my seed was \"Green\" seed and not \"Stratified\" seed.

We were able to count 80 big wild plants today and another 30 wild plants we transplanted. We new they were there but it is still good to see them doing well. What a spot. All scattered throughout a 100 foot by 30 foot area but bunched up in that area in spots. Mostly 4 prong and less than 20 % are 3 prong. We are going to plant some seeds in that part of the woods this fall.

So if anyone else had poor germination I feel confident now more than ever that a large quantity of \"Green Seed\" hit the market. I hope we find out the details on this someday as to how and why it happened. I think I know the answer already, but I hope to hear the official story someday.
Latt

Hey Guys,

On the subject of green seeds.

I think that since we are growers of seng, and we have more information available to us today through this forum, compared to growers that are just starting out and do not utilize the recources that we have available on this site.

If we are planting green seeds this next season. That is our own fault. There has been plenty of info on this site showing how to check our seeds to find out if the embryo is developed or whether the seeds are green.

The best info on this subject was posted by Guy. It shows what the Embryo should look like when it comes out of the stratification box in Sept. Check it out.

www.wildgrown.com/index.php/Ginseng-Foru...emryo-size.html#9911

We should be the kind of growers that are checking our seeds for this(embryo growth) as soon as we recieve our seeds from the seller. If the embryo in the seeds are not developed we should be on the phone with the seller and requesting a refund or demanding them to ship some that are properly stratified.

I feel that, as growers of seng, we need to be able to identify whether the seeds are Green or stratified. We have the information to be able to properly check for this. And if we don't know how to identify the embryo in different growth stages, then we need to learn how.

Some have checked their seeds and claimed that they cannot see any embryo. All seeds have an Embryo! If you cannot see it with the naked eye, then get a magnifer glasses. I use a 3X head visor magnifier and it works great. The embryo is easy to see with 3x magnification.

With all the info that we as growers have been been blessed to have about embryo growth on this forum. If we plant GREEN seeds this next fall, it is our own fault.

If we recieve Green Seeds, we should be the ones that put these sellers of green seed on the spot.

We need to be the well educated ones in this field of growing seng.

Say No to Green Seeds!

classicfur