American Ginseng

If blight showed up in the patch this year, rake the old leaf litter away from around the infected plants once the tops have died back and replace it with a sterile substitute. Do this in fall or winter, while the plants are dormant. Alternaria spores overwinter in the fallen leaf litter, which is why the disease reappears in the same spots each spring. Taking the infested litter away removes the inoculum that would otherwise be waiting for next year's new growth.

As the tops come up, watch for slug damage and bait with an iron phosphate product whose label lists ginseng. Where deer are thick, fence or screen the youngest plants. Slugs are the only pest that regularly attacks ginseng. Deer are the bigger threat and they prefer one-year-old plants, which usually die outright when browsed - older plants often resprout but lose a year's growth, and browsed plants set no seed. On a crop that needs seven or more years in the ground, a lost year is expensive.

Check the planting regularly once the tops are up, looking for dark oily or yellow spots on stems and leaves that turn light brown and grow to two inches with yellow margins, and for wilted, droopy foliage with red or brown edges that signals root rot. Dig out and remove diseased plants immediately, whole. Do not step on foliage, and never walk from a diseased patch into a healthy one. Alternaria blight spreads by wind within a few weeks and overwinters in the leaf litter, so it comes back to the same ground year after year unless you break the cycle. Root rot is worse - if you leave an infected root in the soil it reinfects the site next season, and badly infected ground should not be replanted at all. You are also the vector: spores ride from plant to plant on boots.

In a tended garden planting where blight is actually building, spray chlorothalonil at 7- to 10-day intervals through the warm humid stretch. Alternate it with a different mode of action - iprodione or fluazinam are both registered on ginseng - rather than running chlorothalonil straight through. In a wild-simulated woodland patch, skip this and manage blight with spacing and airflow instead. Alternaria panax germinates on the leaves during long periods of rain, dew, fog, and high humidity, and dense stands stay wet longest after a dew. Chlorothalonil is a protectant, so it only works on foliage it covers before the spores land - once lesions are running it will not rescue the leaf.

Before you take any root, strip the ripe berries off the plant and plant those seeds about an inch deep right in the immediate vicinity of the plant you are digging. A mature plant carries 60 to 100 seeds. Never dig a plant whose fruit is still green. A fruit is not fully ripe until it is completely red, and green fruit holds immature seed that will never germinate - digging then simply removes the plant and its whole future line from the woods. Replanting local seed on the spot is what keeps a patch self-propagating and keeps the local genetics intact.

Harvest only plants with at least three leaves of five leaflets each, which is roughly five years old. Dig after a rain when the soil is moist and loose, setting the spade six inches out from the base of the stem so you do not nick the root, and keep as many root hairs as possible. Leave the neck attached. Rinse with low-pressure water and never scrub, then dry at 70 to 95 degrees with good air circulation, flipping the roots after the first 36 hours. The root is the entire value of the plant, and a nicked root or a scrubbed-off sheen of root hairs costs real money. Plant growth slows sharply once plants reach four prongs, so wild-simulated ginseng is usually dug at seven to eleven years. Below 60 to 70 degrees roots mold before they dry; above 95 the outside goes brittle while the interior stays green.

Plant stratified ginseng seed in October or November - any time from mid-August to mid-December works as long as the ground has not frozen. Kick the leaves aside, sow each seed half an inch to an inch deep with a dibble or knife blade, space seeds 14 to 18 inches apart, and pull the leaves back over the spot. Keep seed refrigerated between 36 and 50 degrees, moist and aerated, until you plant it. Ginseng seed stays dormant 18 to 20 months and only germinates the second spring after the berries ripened, so it has to sit in cold, moist ground through two winters to break dormancy. Sparse spacing is not laziness - it keeps air moving between the leaves, which is the main defense against blight.

After the tops die back, make sure the planting is covered with forest leaf litter to protect and insulate the seed and roots through winter. Keep the layer under two inches thick so seedlings can push through in spring, and resist the urge to pile it deeper. Leaf litter is what a wild ginseng seed overwinters under, and it holds the moisture the seed needs through its long dormancy. Deeper than two inches and the seedlings cannot emerge, and heavy mulch actually raises damping-off, which collapses first-year stems in a cold wet spring - a light cover lowers it.