TOPIC: Paging K_duce to the yellow courtsey phone! a thread for you!

this whole threat is poking some fun.. and a good report on my plantings.

Per instruction from you, I climbed the mountain again to send some real photos of 'sang ...

And some more.... twins!

I realize that the twins above need to be spaced out more, just funny that these would come up together.

In all the beds, the seedlings were not nearly as numerous as I think they will be in another week or two. I think it was you that cautioned me as to the weather... I'm thinking that the northernmost edge of NC in the mountains is behind you --where you are there in tenn.

However the rootlets are showing very well. Everything was planted in the Month of March, both seeds and rootlets.

here's some rootlets, these are spaced about a foot apart.

And some more... from another bed.

Whitjr,
Nice pics,

WET AND MATTED LEAF PROBLEM STORY BELOW FROM TODAY.
If anyone is interested I learned a lesson today. I checked one of my ginseng beds at my woods we own that is 84 miles from where I live now while visiting for Easter.

My 2 year old ginseng is coming up nicely and looks much like your pics above. However I notices it was a little thinner than last year. We have had record breaking rain fall this April and the leaves are wet and matted down. I suspected with the leaves being so wet and heavy that some of the plants may be having a difficult time finding a gap to poke through. The leaves are from Ash, Hickory and Beech so they are not big like Oak leaves. But they are still wet and heavy and many plant tops are developed but growing sideways looking for a way through the matted leaves. Many are simply just curling over under the leaves because they cannot lift the wet leaves up.

I took the leaves off of a 4 foot by 4 foot spot and exposed many plant tops that could not poke through. I am certain that these plants under the leaves that have not made their way through will eventually run out of energy to find their way through. It was very disappointing to say the least and is driving me crazy.

I know many of us have discussed carefully raking at least 50 % of the leaves off the planting bed a couple of weeks prior to the plants popping up. I wish I would have done this.

So I called Larry this evening and asked him what I should do. He said it would be good to carefully lift up the excess leaves to help the plants. Unfortunately I will not be able to get back over to do that. He said their is a good chance that these two year olds will go dormant if they cannot make it through and will come up next year. I am fine with this and it makes me feel a bit better. I will rake some leaves off Next March before this happens again next spring.

The bad news is if these were seeds just planted last fall that they will not come up the following year if they do not make it through this spring and very soon. This is disturbing since I have planted a large quantity last fall and early winter.

I am going to go to my newly planted sites and carefully lift off the wet leaves with a four prong pitch fork. I do not want to lose 20 lbs of newly planted seeds.

He also said that the rain and moisture will protect the plants under the matted leaves for now. But it will increase my survival rate substantially if I can get the excess leaves off.

Record rains were unexpected and anyone faced with the same problem might want to consider this.

I guess I will be doing this next weekend verses mushroom hunting. Oh well, learning the hard way but I do not think it is too late to correct the problem. It's just going to really take a while but worth it.

Next year I will not let this happen again. I am going to mulch the leaves before I put them back on the beds after planting. He also recommended I consider using straw or composted sawdust or a combination of both to prevent this from happening again.

I think I will stick with mulching the leaves in the woods. I know I have stated this before but I have an old self propelled mulching mower that I am going to use from now on.

Live and learn I guess. I hope this does not happen to anyone else.
Latt

I am worried about the same thing. Besides being wetter than all hell here. It looks like I put to heavy of a leaf blanket over my beds. Trouble is the leaves are so matted it will be hard to reduce it. I planted 3 weeks ago so nothing is up, I will try and work on ithis week if it ever stops raining.

Whit, looks good brother.....I am in west tennessee at probably a much lower elevation than you are and ive seen how the mountains start greening from the bottom up, thats why i thought that your crops would be behind mine. they should thicken up thru-out the spring, IMO.

Latt,sounds like its going to be a job. I always have had what i thought was a leaf density issue, however i haven't done anything about it. I have a large amount of hickory, oak both white and red, maple and popular. Do what you feel you need to do, 20lbs is alot. Good Luck
Oh here is ya another pic.

After walking around in the woods so much last week i needed a place to \"cool my dawgs\"

No i mean literally...........cool my dawgs.....