A good place to plant seeds like that…
I have raked out a many of those.
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Do deer/turkeys eat the ginseng?
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Deer will eat the tops… especially in years when you have serious drought conditions. In normal years the deer browse is minimal.
After the ginseng plant is a couple years old… a deer can eat the top (in summer or fall)… but the root remains in the ground and will continue to develop a bud for the next springs top.
As long as the root remains and has the energy stores… the top can be eaten… and it will not come back up that same year… but will the next spring.
It is common for older established roots… to not send up a top each year… every once in a while they just do not send up a top… but they will a year or two later.
Often when digging ginseng you will find a nice top and while digging that root… you will find another nice root right beside it… that had no top up. Done that many times.
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Turrkeys… can damage new planting beds with all the scratching they do… but will have little effect on more estlablished beds 3-4 year olds or older.
If your location is right… with good calcium levels 2000-6000…ph 4.5- 5.5… by year 4 or 5 your ginseng plants will begin to produce berries.
Then you have your own seed source… and by year 7 or 8… you shoukd not have to purchase any more stratified seed.
I bought and planted 10 lbs of stratifiied seed over 5 or 6 years. There are approx 7000 seeds per pound… so that was 70,000 seeds planted.
Now i just collect berries and replant those as i harvest roots in the fall.
Note a location that is right… and has that 2000-6000 calcium levels and ph 4.5-5.5… you can plant your beds wirh seed density of 4-5 seeds per sq ft.
In ideal location there will be much less disease pressure and you can get by with denser plantings of large beds.
But if your ph is not quite perfect or calcium levels are lower 1000-1500 for example… even if you supplement with gypsum… you better plant much smaller beds and only use like 2-3 seeds per sq ft.
Large Dense populations in less than ideal locations will quickly be thinned out drastically by disease pressure.
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