Part 5 (1/2)
The best time to do all planting is in the spring. This gives the most thrifty plants with the least number missing. When the plants are two years old they must be transplanted into permanent beds.
These are prepared in the same manner as they were for the seed. A board six inches wide is thrown across the bed, you step on this and with a spade throw out a ditch along the edge of the board. In this the roots are set on a slant of 45 degrees and so the bud will be from one to two inches beneath the surface. The furrow is then filled and the board moved its width. By putting the roots six inches apart in the row and using a six-inch board your plants will be six inches each way, which with most growers have given best results. When the roots have grown three years in the transplanted beds they should be ready to dig and dry for market. They should average two ounces each at this time if the soil was rich in plant food and properly prepared and cared for.
The plants require considerable care and attention thru each summer.
Moles must be caught, blight and other diseases treated and the weeds pulled, especially from among the younger plants. As soon as the plants are up in the spring the seed buds should be clipped from all the plants except those finest and healthiest plants you may save for your seed to maintain your garden. The clipping of the seed buds is very essential, because we want the very largest and best flavored root in the shortest time for the market. Then if we grow bushels of seed to the expense of the root, it is only a short time when many thousands of pounds of root must compete with our own for the market and lower the price.
CHAPTER VII.
SHADING AND BLIGHT.
In several years experience growing Ginseng, says a well known grower, I have had no trouble from blight when I shade and mulch enough to keep the soil properly cool, or below 65 degrees, as you will find the temperature in the forests, where the wild plants grow best, even during summer days.
Some years ago I allowed the soil to get too warm, reaching 70 degrees or more. The blight attacked many plants then. This proved to me that growing the plants under the proper temperature has much to do with blight.
When fungus diseases get upon wild plants, that is plants growing in the forest, in most cases it can be traced to openings, forest fires and the woodman's ax. This allows too much sun to strike the plants and ground in which they are growing. If those engaged, or about to engage, in Ginseng growing will study closely the conditions under which the wild plants flourish best, they can learn much that they will only find out after years of experimenting.
Mr. L. E. Turner in a recent issue of ”Special Crops” says: We cannot depend on shade alone to keep the temperature of the soil below 65 degrees--the shade would have to be almost total. In order to allow sufficient light and yet keep the temperature down, we must cover the ground with a little mulch. The more thoroughly the light is diffused the better for the plants. Now, when we combine sufficient light with say one-half inch of clean mulch, we are supplying to the plants their natural environment, made more perfect in that it is everywhere alike.
The mulch is as essential to the healthy growth of the Ginseng plant as clothing is to the comfort and welfare of man; it can thrive without it no more than corn will grow well with it. These are plants of opposite nature. Use the mulch and reduce the shade to the proper density. The mulch is of the first importance, for the plants will do much better with the mulch and little shade than without mulch and with plenty of shade.
Ginseng is truly and wholly a savage. We can no more tame it than we can the partridge. We can lay out a preserve and stock it with Ginseng as we would with partridges, but who would stock a city park with partridges and expect them to remain there? We cannot make a proper Ginseng preserve under conditions halfway between a potato patch and a wild forest, but this is exactly the trouble with a large share of Ginseng gardens. They are just a little too much like the potato patch to be exactly suited to the nature of Ginseng. The plant cannot thrive and remain perfectly healthy under these conditions; we may apply emulsions and physic, but we will find it to be just like a person with an undermined const.i.tution, it will linger along for a time subject to every disease that is in the air and at last some new and more subtle malady will, in spite of our efforts, close its earthly career.
Kind readers, I am in a position to know thoroughly whereof I write, for I have been intimate for many years with the wild plants and with every shade of condition under which they manage to exist. I have found them in the valley and at the hilltop, in the tall timber and the brambled ”slas.h.i.+ng,” but in each place were the necessary conditions of shade and mulch. The experienced Ginseng hunter comes to know by a kind of instinct just where he will find the plant and he does not waste time searching in unprofitable places. It is because he understands its environment. It is the environment he seeks--the Ginseng is then already found. The happy medium of condition under which it thrives best in the wild state form the process of healthy culture.
[Ill.u.s.tration: One Year's Growth of Ginseng Under Lattice Shade.]
Mr. Wm E. Mowrer, of Missouri, is evidently not in favor of the cloth shading. I think if he had thoroughly water-proofed the cloth it would have withstood the action of the weather much better. It would have admitted considerably less light and if he had given enough mulch to keep the soil properly cool and allowed s.p.a.ce enough for ventilation, he would not have found the method so disastrous. We will not liken his trial to the potato patch, but to the field where tobacco is started under canvas. A tent is a cool place if it is open at the sides and has openings in the top and the larger the tent the cooler it will be. Ginseng does splendidly under a tent if the tent is built expressly with regard to the requirements of Ginseng.
In point of cheapness a vine shading is yet ahead of the cloth system. The wild cuc.u.mber vine is best for this purpose, for it is exactly suited by nature to the conditions in a Ginseng garden. It is a native of moist, shady places, starts early, climbs high and rapidly. The seeds may be planted five or six in a ”hill” in the middle of the beds, if preferred, at intervals of six or seven feet, and the vines may be trained up a small pole to the arbor frame.
Wires, strings or boughs may be laid over the arbor frame for the vines to spread over. If the shade becomes too dense some of the vines may be clipped off and will soon wither away. Another advantage of the wild cuc.u.mber is that it is very succulent, taking an abundance of moisture and to a great extent guards against excessive dampness in the garden. The vines take almost no strength from the soil. The exceeding cheapness of this method is the great point in its favor. It is better to plant a few too many seeds than not enough, for it is easy to reduce the shade if too dense, but difficult to increase it in the summer if too light.
This disease threatens seriously to handicap us in the raising of Ginseng, says a writer in ”Special Crops.” It does down, but is giving us trouble all over the country. No section seems to be immune from it, tho all seem to be spraying more or less. I know of several good growers whose gardens have gone down during the last season and this, and they state that they began early and sprayed late, but to no decided benefit. What are we to do? Some claim to have perfect success with spraying as their supposed prevention.
Three years ago I began to reason on this subject and in my rambles in the woods, I have watched carefully for this disease, as well as others on the wild plant, and while I have now and then noted a wild plant that was not entirely healthy, I have never seen any evidence of blight or other real serious disease. The wild plant usually appears ideally healthy, and while they are smaller than we grow in our gardens, they are generally strikingly healthful in color and general appearance. Why is this so? And why do we have such a reverse of things among our gardens?
I will offer my ideas on the subject and give my theories of the causes of the various diseases and believe that they are correct and time will prove it. At least I hope these efforts of mine will be the means of helping some who are having so much trouble in the cultivation of Ginseng. The old saw that the ”proof of the pudding is in chewing the bag,” may be amply verified by a visit to my gardens to show how well my theories have worked so far. I will show you Ginseng growing in its highest state of perfection and not a scintilla of blight or any species of alternaria in either of them, while around me I scarcely know of another healthy garden.
To begin with, moisture is our greatest enemy; heat next; the two combined at the same time forming the chief cause for most diseases of the plant.
If the soil in our gardens could be kept only slightly moist, as it is in the woods, and properly shaded, ventilated and mulched, I am sure such a thing as blight and kindred diseases would never be known. The reason for this lies in the fact that soil temperature is kept low and dry. The roots, as is well known, go away down in the soil, because the temperature lower down is cooler than at the surface.
Here is where mulch plays so important a part because it protects the roots from so much heat that finds its way between the plants to the top of the beds. The mulch acts as a blanket in keeping the heat out and protecting the roots thereby. If any one doubts this, just try to raise the plants without mulch, and note how some disease will make its appearance. The plant will stand considerable sun, however, with heavy enough mulch. And the more sun it can take without harm, the better the root growth will be. Too much shade will show in a spindling top and slender leaves, and invariable smallness of root growth, for, let it be borne in mind always, that the plant must derive more or less food from the top, and it is here that the fungi in numerous forms proceed to attack.
The plant will not grow in any other atmosphere but one surcharged with all kinds of fungi. This is the natural environment of the plant and the only reason why the plants do not all become diseased lies in the plain fact that its vitality is of such a high character that it can resist the disease, hence the main thing in fighting disease is to obtain for the plant the best possible hygienic surroundings and feed it with the best possible food and thus nourish it to the highest vitality.
I am a firm believer in spraying of the proper kind, but spraying will not keep a plant free from disease with other important conditions lacking. Spraying, if heavily applied, is known as a positive injury to the plant, despite the fact that many claim it is not, and the pity is we should have to resort to it in self-defense.
The pores of the leaflets are clogged up to a greater or less extent with the deposited solution and the plant is dependent to this extent of its power to breathe.