If you don't plant the seed, it won't grow.

Back when we first "discovered" growing ginseng, we had the benefit of living right down the road from another ginseng grower who was kind enough to show us how he did it. He was unusual too- he'd been at it long enough to know that in order to get a decent yearly income a grower had to plant enough acreage to ensure that an adequate harvest would result.

When we got serious about growing ginseng (that is- when we started spending real money on seed) it was obvious that we needed to establish a method. Later, we found an article by Andy Hankins on growing wild simulated ginseng, and it was a good start. After trying to plant using the technique Andy described, it was obvious that we had to mechanize the planting process or we'd never get the seed planted.

Unfortunately, the article by Andy Hankins assumed that you'd only plant about a half-acre of ginseng, and that isn't nearly enough. There is a simple equation here that determines what will happen: (amount of seed planted per acre) x (number of acres planted) = income at harvest. We've found that planting 20 pounds of seed per acre is about the right amount of seed to ensure an adequate harvest without overplanting.

The first issue was deciding how to arrange our planting. A 3 x 2 planting matrix was decided on that would maximize the yield, minimize the problems from disease and allow easy access to the planting area for pest control, seed harvest and root harvest.

We plant three rows 1 foot apart, separated by a two-foot walkway, three more rows spaced 1 foot apart, another two-foot walkway and so on.

During planting, we planted seed every 6 inches on each of the rows, with the idea that the plants would eventually thin out naturally to about 1 plant per foot in each row. If they don't thin out, you get more ginseng. You don't want to plant any closer because anything closer than this will promote the spread of disease in your crop, and you don't want that.

This planting layout generates about 24,000 ginseng plants per acre, and if at harvest time you have an average of 100 roots per pound (dried weight) you'll get about 240 pounds per acre. A 10 acre farm would yield over a ton of root, and this is sufficient quantity to deal with the major ginseng exporters and command top dollar for your crop.

If you're planting on a hillside and use rows 100 feet long, you'll plant 240 rows to the acre. Using a hoe to scratch a 1-inch furrow in the root-filled soil under the trees is back-breaking work, and we found that it took 20 to 30 minutes just to scratch one row. That didn't count the time it took to rake away the leaves, plant the seed, cover the seed and rake the leaves back. We tried to save time by scratching out 3 rows at a time, and it was taking over an hour to plant each three-row "stripe" down the hillside.

At that rate the only way to plant 10 acres in a single year would be to hire 10 crew of Mexican laborers for 6 weeks of solid work, and at $10 per hour for the laborers, that's going to come out to some serious money. 240 hours per person x 10 laborers is 2400 man-hours of work, and at $10 per hour the bill after 6 weeks is going to be about $24,000. Who has that kind of money?

The major problem was the surface roots from the trees, which made it extremely difficult to scratch out a furrow with the corner of the hoe. Something had to be done. Fortunately we had a year to think about it, because the next year we discovered that we were paying a stiff penalty in terms of weed growth everywhere we disturbed the ground. The furrows we cut really stimulated the germination of any seeds that were laying dormant in the soil, and you could clearly see exactly where we'd worked the ground by the abundant weed growth.

The Second Year

The following fall, we experimented with a "planting stick" to get the seed in the ground. After raking the leaves back, we stretched out a thin white nylon rope on the ground that had been marked with a permanent marker every 6 inches. We used a stick that resembled a ski pole, except that the round guard at the end was only 3/4 of an inch from the end of the stick.

We'd pole the stick in the ground every 6 inches on each row using the marks on the rope as a guide. The rope was on the middle row, so we poked a hole 1 foot to the left of the rope, a hole beside the rope and a hole 1 foot to the right of the rope. We hired the kids to put follow us and put two seeds in each hole. After the seed went in the hole, we stepped on it to cover the seed. That speeded up the planting process considerably, and if we hit a rock or a big root the hole could be shifted a bit to compensate. Best of all, we didn't stimulate any weed growth.

We eventually welded up a planting tool that allowed us to poke 3 holes at once with the correct spacing:

Place the planting tool on the ground ever 6 inches and step on it to drive the pointed rebar into the ground, and then rock it back and forth a bit when drawing it out of the ground. It only takes a few seconds to make 3 perfect planting holes, and with 2 motivated kids following you with a bag of seed, you can move up and down the rows very quickly.

After the seed is dropped into the holes, push on the dirt at the edge of the hole to cover the seed and you're done. We planted 2 seeds per hole and used a small block of wood to collapse the hole. If you're planting by yourself, a 3-foot piece of 1/2 inch conduit pipe will allow you to drop the seed in the holes without bending down, and you can collapse the holes with your foot.

This turned out to be a good way to plant, but it requires several people in order to get this done in a timely manner. By hiring some motivated children, you can plant 3 100 foot rows every 20 to 30 minutes if everyone has a rake. This method is probably the best method in terms of making a minimal impact on the forest floor (no weed growth) and speed of planting- especially if you have children or grandchildren who are available to work as helpers.

The Third Year

We were still pursueing our quest for the most efficient method of planting the seed. Who can take weeks of time away from job or business to go up and down a hill out in the woods? We were looking for a method whereby a single person could plant an acre of ginseng in a couple of days. This would make planting an acre of ginseng a "weekend" project with a full week to recover before the next weekend. Allowing for a bit of vacation time and even factoring in bad weather, we reasoned that it would be possible to plant a 10 acre spread in a single planting season.

We finally wound up raking the leaves aside and using a Planter Jr. seeder to lay the seed just below the surface, then raking the leaves back on to cover the seed. In the areas we put out a lot of Decon mouse bait, this method worked well. In areas where the mice had all winter to find the seed and eat it, this method was a failure.

We compromised by using an edger to scratch a furrow in the ground and then used the seeder to drop the seed into the furrow. If your ground isn't too rocky, you can use a gasoline powered edger (just be sure to put up a guard (we used several pieces of old carpeting from the house) to stop any flying rocks and make sure you wear safety glasses). We tried the gasoline powered edger on our farm, but even with a big piece of used carpeting to stop the rocks it was too dangerous. Our area of the country was way too rocky.

In a better environment we'd prefer to use a gasoline-powered edger, but when the soil is really rocky there is not only a danger from flying rock but also from broken blades. Use extreme caution if you attempt this and always have someone else out in the woods with you. A flying rock or piece of steel can ruin your day in a hurry and if you don't have help the situation could be extremely dangerous. Quite literally, a person could die of blood loss and shock if they got cut badly enough and didn't have help. That's why we wound up using a hand held manual edger instead of the gasoline powered one.

The Fourth Year

By this time, we'd had enough experience seeing what was working to know that the weeds weren't that big of a deal, so we didn't care about disturbing the ground as long as it was minimal. What we really wanted was something like a rotary hoe that would "rough up" the ground on the rows without slicing through the roots. We made one with some replacement plates for a disc and some spiked wheels from an old rotary hoe, but it was pretty heavy and didn't work very well. If there was a way to line up 5 or 6 spiked wheels from a rotary hoe on a light frame, it might work.

We began to wonder if we were just being lazy, and eventually decided that planting ginseng was hard work and to just deal with it. We raked the leaves back, roughed up the ground and planted the seed with a Planter Jr. type of garden seeder. It was enough of a compromise between efficiency and effort to get the job done in good time without killing ourselves in the process.

Because we weren't getting the seed in the ground that deep, we put out a bunch of pieces of 6-inch PVC pipe with Decon mouse bait in them (the PVC pipe was to protect the mouse bait from the elements) to eliminate the mice long enough for the ginseng seed to survive the winter, and the following year the seed came up just fine.

Conclusion

Your geography and the size of your trees will have a lot to do with how easy it is to plant your crop. Give all of these methods a try and find out what works best for you, and then get the seed in the ground. None of this is even worth talking about if you don't get your seed in the ground.