TOPIC: Am I begging for disease...

You can transplant this fall, but I'd suggest waiting til the second fall.

I planted some about that thick in the past, and a lot of beds 5x50' in size, with some beds even larger than that.

They looked great, like yours early on.

Later in the summer, some started showing little yellow spots, then later on the leaves sort of looked like they were melting.

First 3 years they thinned out a LOT... and I changed my planting style to very small beds (like 3x3') and spacing those beds out quite a bit. That has helped a lot with cutting down on disease issues.

I think if you are not going to do a regular fungicide spraying program... then you will be very lucky if you plant large beds thick like that and the majority survive and do well.

At least that is true here on my place. I am not going to spray, so for me the only option was to plant smaller and thinner. That is working for me now... but this growing ginseng thing is a work in process, learn as the years go by type thing, and no doubt it varies quite a bit from site to site.


Good Luck !

TNhunter

Rural Action Forestry wrote:

I'd agree with Castle and say they are a bit dense. It takes some practice to get the seed ratio right with rake and scatter. If you are concerned about disease I would also agree with Castle and use some kind of organic preventative. Copper as Brad said, or pelletized gypsum also has some detterent effect on diseases as well as providing the calcium that ginseng loves. As for the miracle grow, I have never heard that recommended outside of intensive woods cultivated. Mircale Gro is a high nitrogen fertilizer, and excess nitrogen actually creates more favorable conditions for pests and disease. All in all, mortality is part of ginseng growing. I would rather just cull some of the seedlings than use chemicals. Im of the opinion that once you start making those interventions it is hard to stop. Better to create conditions for minimal disease up front.

Good call on the nitrogen. That may very well be on getting the seng \"addicted\" to the fertilizer. Kinda like a diesel truck getting addicted to ether. Once you start using it there aint no going back.

Thanks again for the replies.

I want to keep everything as chem free as possible so ill let them go and try to transplant in a year or two. Also the rest of the test plots were more spread out than this one so not a huge deal.

I've no shortage of north facing hill sides so ill try to just keep them more spread out from here on out.

Thanks again,

John B