Ginseng in Your Backyard

In four to five months, the plant leaves will change color and die off with dormancy. Protect plants from rats and other vermin by covering pots with wire mesh. After winter arrives, you can separate the rootlets and plant them into other pots or straight into your garden. Growing plants do not transplant well. Apply blood meal and bonemeal.

Expectations

Each year a well-maintained plant grows a larger top up to year four or five. The root will also enlarge. Roots should be large enough to harvest by the third year. Roots can be left many years in the ground before harvesting. The average person uses one root a week, so 50 plants per person will suffice. Start collecting your own seed from about the third year. A plant takes four years to mature in a container and five to ten years in the ground.

Note by Traute Klein, biogardener

In Canada, Ginseng grows wild in the milder climates. Commercial cultivation has been done in the Frazer Valley of British Columbia, and I have seen photographs of it. Whereas in the wild, ginseng always grows in the shade of trees, in the commercial situation, the entire field is covered with a large black cloth canopy, a rather expensive measure to maintain, but necessary to produce the required continual shade.

I do not live in a climate warm enough for growing ginseng, and my alkaline clay soil does not lend itself to it anyway. Otherwise I would just grow enough ginseng for family consumption, not commercially. The practice is rather a gamble, and I would not recommend it unless you have the right soil and the natural shade of trees.

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