No wonder Ginseng is called the herb of our ancestors, because its healing properties have been known since ancient times. They say that he is able to prolong life, to get rid of many diseases. It is difficult to find ginseng in an ordinary forest, the root, the powders from it are expensive. This article talks about how to grow ginseng from seeds in your summer cottage.
Plant description
Ginseng belongs to the Araliaceae family, it is a herbaceous, perennial plant. Translated from Chinese, the word ginseng sounds like "root man", this name is associated with the amazing similarity of the root with the human body.
The main root of the plant is powerful; it lives for many decades. Part of the ginseng, located underground, is divided into two parts:
- neck, or rhizome,
- root, which is the most valuable part of the plant.
Annual shoots leave traces in the form of scars along the entire length of the rhizome, by the number of which it is possible to determine the age of the plant without difficulty. In the upper part of the neck of ginseng is the main kidney, from it appears an escape the next year. Other shoots are formed from sleeping buds located along the entire length of the neck. The root itself is large, powerful, its size depends on the age of the plant. The root is white at break, it has a sweet taste and a peculiar smell.
The stem growing from a sleeping bud is single, hollow inside, its shape is round. On the apical outlet there are from 2 to 5 leaves, and the stem height is about 60 centimeters. The leaves are palmate, large, long-leaved. Ginseng flowers are small, up to 2 mm, have a nondescript, green-white color, form inflorescences-umbrellas. Drupe fruits the size of a small cherry, fleshy, bright red in color, with 2-3 seeds. Ginseng seeds are irregular in shape, wrinkled, gray-yellow. The size of the seeds across is about 5 mm. Photos of how ginseng seeds and the plant look completely are available in the article.
Ginseng flowering begins in June, and the fruits ripen more often in August.
Is it possible to grow ginseng in the garden?
Knowing how useful this plant is, many people think about whether it is possible to grow ginseng from seeds at home. Ginseng breeders with many years of experience say that this plant will be able to grow anywhere, you just need to create certain conditions for this, as close as possible to natural. Ginseng requires special soil composition, cover, light, moisture, and so on.
The root of natural ginseng reaches its optimum mass by about twenty years. This is due to slow metabolism. In the garden, you can accelerate this process, knowing which agricultural practices must be followed. Next, we suggest learning how to grow ginseng from seeds.
Site selection
When choosing a site, the first thing to consider is that ginseng cannot tolerate even short-term flooding. The soil should be well-drained, and the groundwater should go deep. When planting ginseng on a slope, it is better to choose its northwestern or northeast side. As for the illumination of the site, it should be located so that the plant receives sunlight only in the morning and in the evening, the hot daytime sun is not contraindicated for ginseng. But the place should not be too dark. With a lack of light, the plant will be weak.
According to reviews of people who are engaged in the cultivation of such a plant, daylight should be 1/13 or 1/8 of the time. From this it is worth concluding that it is impossible to grow ginseng without the installation of shading devices. In the first two years, the plant needs less light than later.
How to shade the area?
Today, there are many ways to create shadows on a plot. We suggest considering the most common method.
When growing seedlings from ginseng seeds, you need to make shields from the boards. The gaps between the boards should be from one and a half to three centimeters. The optimal dimensions of the shields for the beds per meter - 170 cm length, 100 cm - width. The height of the shields can be any, but during the construction of such a shadow shelter it is necessary to take into account the fact that it was easy to carry out agricultural work on the spot.
It is recommended to leave a distance of at least half a meter between the beds.
Soil preparation
When growing ginseng from seeds, special attention should be paid to soil preparation. Surely this is the only plant before planting which the first thing to do is cultivate the soil, and only after that they are looking for planting material. This fact is due to the fact that some soil components ripen within several years - from 2 to 3. The main thing is to create soil, the composition of which will be as similar as possible to taiga. Humus in this soil contains 6-8%, pH (acidity) neutral - about 5.7. But these are not the only important points: taiga soil is loose, air- and water-permeable, with a large supply of organic substances.
Soil composition
Ginseng is a special plant, and the main feature of its cultivation is precisely the preparation of the soil. The success of the cultivation depends on how successful the composition of the soil is.
The composition of the soil may include the following components:
- turf land;
- vermicompost;
- forest soil taken from under bushes and deciduous trees;
- humus from foliage;
- manure, but not fresh, optimally - four years ago;
- silt from the lake;
- peat;
- decayed sawdust;
- sand;
- wood dust;
- soot;
- ash;
- crushed eggshell.
You need to use all of these components, but each growing ginseng selects the proportions individually.
Potato, tomato and cucumber should not be the predecessors at the ginseng planting site. The fact is that the plant can undergo the same diseases as the listed cultures.
A bed for sowing ginseng seeds or planting seedlings is prepared at least 2 months in advance. The height of the ridge should be half a meter, length - meter.
Ginseng seeds collection and preparation
The seeds of this plant are at rest for a very long time. In vivo, germination begins only after 22 months, and sometimes even later. This is a characteristic feature of growing ginseng.
Seeds can only be collected from a plant that has reached the age of four. About how ginseng seeds look, where they are, we wrote above, so it’s easy to find them. The seed is easily separated from the pulp. Next, the seeds obtained should be washed well under water, while rubbing together to completely remove all the fibers of the berries. With this treatment, you can not be afraid to spoil the seeds, because they have a stone, reliably protected from all kinds of damage. Only those that have drowned in water are to be planted . Those remaining on the surface are empty, nothing will grow out of them. After the material is washed, it must be dried in a well-ventilated and dark room. Next, you need to disinfect.
In order to destroy all pathogenic bacteria in the seeds of the plant, you need to prepare a bath of 0.1-0.2 percent potassium permanganate. Soak the seeds for 20 minutes, then dry.
A nylon stocking filled with sand is ideal for storing seed. Seeds are mixed with sand in a ratio of 1/3.
Before placing the seeds in storage, you need to prepare the sand. The first step is to sift it, as it is suitable only for coarse grains. Coarse sand is first washed under running water until the water is clear, then heat treatment is carried out. Ideally spread the sand on a baking sheet, place it in a red-hot oven for 3 hours. During this time, all microbes and organic debris will die. After this procedure, disinfected sand is washed again under running water.
Stratification
Only stratified ginseng seeds need to be planted. The procedure can be both natural and accelerated. Stratification is carried out in two stages:
- Warm for 4-5 months at a temperature of +18 ... + 20 degrees.
- The cold period lasts as much as the warm one, the temperature should be at the level of 1-2 degrees of heat.
The main thing during stratification is to prevent drying of planting material.
To distinguish seeds ready for planting from unprepared can be quite simple. Stratified shells will have a cracked shell, and non-stratified shells will have a whole.
During stratification, sand should be moistened systematically. About once a month, the seeds need to be removed, disinfected in a solution of potassium permanganate, and the sand calcined in the oven. Thus, several factors will be achieved: disinfection, loosening, ventilation. Stratification will be faster this way than under natural conditions, and already in April next year, crops can be sown.
If natural stratification is carried out, then it will be possible to sow seeds in the autumn of next year - in September and October. The natural way to carry out the procedure is as follows:
- Place a bag of sand and seeds in the ground to a depth of 10 centimeters in the spring, after thawing the soil, or in the fall, before it freezes.
- If the bag was buried in the autumn, then in the spring it will be necessary to get it out, calcine the sand and disinfect the seeds, and again dig it in the bag until autumn. Do the same in the fall if the seeds have been buried since spring.
- Throughout the period, you need to monitor the condition of the soil, it should not dry out. Also ensure that seed is not damaged by rodents.
Next, we propose going to the point on how to plant ginseng from seeds.
Sowing
As already mentioned earlier, the beds for the plant need to be prepared in at least 2 months, this is the most important procedure. There is nothing complicated about planting ginseng seeds.
Make holes in the soil with a depth of five centimeters, leave a distance between them of three centimeters. Between the rows you need to make gaps of 20 centimeters.
Place ginseng seeds, the photo of which is in the article, in each hole, sprinkle with earth and water well. Make sure that the sun's rays do not fall on the sprouts that appear, since the plant will go to the upper growth, and we need good and strong roots.
Care Rules
- Water the crops as needed. The moisture content of the soil should be approximately 60-70 percent, and air - more than 70-80 percent. For one square meter, 3 liters of water are consumed during irrigation, in which it is recommended to add a little manganese. You need to monitor air humidity with a psychrometer. In the absence of such an item, you can resort to a folk recipe: you need to wrap a little salt in a rag, hang this bag at the landing site. If after a few hours the salt becomes wet, it will mean that everything is in order.
- Weeding and loosening the beds with ginseng need only manually. Loosening is recommended at least 10 times per season, if the crust is too stiff, then you can use wooden sticks. The depth of cultivation is 10 centimeters. Mulching the soil is also a very promising agricultural method, which promotes air exchange and prevents the growth of weeds, protects the soil from drying out, and the plant from sudden changes in temperature. The first time the mulching should be done immediately after planting the seeds of black ginseng. Further at the discretion, but always after watering or rains. As mulch use needles, sawdust or humus.
- The root gains weight only after fruiting. As soon as the fruits ripen on the plants, it will be necessary to allow the entry of oblique sunlight to plant.
Diseases and Pests
In vivo growth, ginseng is rarely affected by diseases, as it grows in small groups or rarely found single plants. At home, various kinds of diseases can occur that appear due to poor-quality soil (infected), the use of not overripe fertilizers, and the lack of disinfection of seeds and sand. Also, the cause of diseases can be the lack of loosening and drainage, stagnation of water in the plantings, potatoes, tomatoes and cucumbers sprouting nearby, the absence or excess of watering, weed grass.
Ginseng does not suffer from specific diseases, but is exposed to all the familiar "garden", this:
- Anthracnose is the most common disease that affects not only adult plants, but also seedlings. Anthracnose appears brown or dark green spots on the foliage. The disease occurs due to the excessive presence of the plant in direct sunlight. For prevention, you need to process leaflets with Bordeaux liquid. If some plants become a victim of the disease, then it will be better to remove them, since the disease is easily transmitted next to the growing ones.
- Fusarium The disease manifests itself as a friendly withering of landings. The root neck of ginseng becomes brown, and then rots. Fusariosis can go to the root and destroy it. The causative agents of the disease are in the soil itself, it is very difficult to deal with them. For prevention purposes, spraying ridges with a solution of potassium permanganate is used, it is also necessary at the end of the season to burn all residues from plants in the garden.
- Dry rusty rot. External signs are as follows: the plant becomes sluggish, foliage is lowered, the root changes color to dirty gray. Fighting the disease is simple: you need to treat the roots with a solution of Bordeaux fluid, and within a few minutes after this the rot will disappear. It happens that plants are cured on their own. For preventive purposes, it is recommended to spray the ridges with a two percent solution of slaked lime - 1 liter per about 20 meters squared.
- The danger to ginseng is represented by rodents, wireworms, slugs, aphids, larvae, and bears. It is necessary for the safety of plants to apply manual capture of pests. To get rid of many of the prescribed pests, you need to handle planting with soapy water and a decoction of tobacco.
Winter care
In autumn, you need to top-up in the form of ordinary wood ash. After harvesting the leaves, the plantings are covered with a two-centimeter layer of vermicompost, which will not only protect the kidneys and root from frost, but also become an excellent fertilizer.
In the spring, when the snow melts, again it will be necessary to pour wood ash on the beds.
Ginseng root can be used as a medicine only from the fifth or sixth year of its life.