From growing a small ginseng garden as a hobby to growing ginseng as a business, sometimes it is difficult to figure out the amount of seeds you need. Of course, how much ginseng seeds you would need depend on how much ginseng planting area you have. The following are two examples that show how easily it can be to understand calculating the amount of ginseng seeds you would need. As a rule of thumb, 20 lbs. of ginseng seeds will cover an acre of planting area. Please keep in mind that an acre is 43,500 square feet.

Example 1:

Bob has a one-tenth acre of land he plans on using for his ginseng farm, which equals about 4,350 square feet. It provides about 3,600 square feet of planting area after allowing for walkways, tree roots, watercourses, boulders, and debris in the area. Now, he needs to plant four seeds per square foot for a requirement of 14,400 seeds, with the understanding that one plant per square foot should be the eventual spacing to avoid disease and other problems resulting from overcrowding. This assumes an average germination rate of 75 percent, meaning that approximately three out of every four seeds should germinate and become established. Each pound of ginseng seeds contain about 7,000 seeds, which means that he would need about 2 pounds of seeds to adequately plant his ginseng farm.

Example 2:

If Mary has 5 acres of ginseng farm land, she has about 180,000 square feet of planting area. With 4 seeds per square feet, she would need about 720,000 seeds which lead to about 103 pounds of seeds to adequately plant her ginseng farm.

If you have a smaller planting area, make sure you calculate how much square footage you have first, and then subtract about 1/5 to 1/6 of total space for allowing walkways, tree roots and other debris. Now you multiply 4 (4 seeds per square foot) by the final square footage to calculate the total number of seeds. This number divided by 7,000 will yield the number of pounds of ginseng seeds you will need.

Remember, 2 oz. is 1/8 lb., 4 oz. is 1/4 lb., 8 oz. is 1/2 lb., and 16 oz. is 1 lb.

For those of you who might still need assistance in calculating the amount of ginseng seeds you need for your ginseng farm, I will be glad to help you with those calculations. Please e-mail us with your dimensions (width and depth) with a brief description of your future ginseng farm (pictures are welcome too).