118 PRESENT STATUS OF THE INDUSTRY. 



finger hold the root in place, again insert the dibber 

 an inch from the hole, pressing the earth firmly against 

 the root, especially at the lower end, and smooth off 

 with the hand. For setting southern roots use a 

 dibber three inches wide to make room for the num- 

 erous fibers or rootlets. Northern roots are straight 

 like a young parsnip with very few rootlets. A dibber 

 that will answer very well may be made by cutting 

 about fourteen inches from the top of a fork handle 

 and sharpening to a point. 



"After setting cover the beds with fine rotten 

 manure about an inch deep, and leaves or swale grass 

 three or four inches deep, which latter must be removed 

 in the spring. We prepare our beds in the fall for 

 setting roots in the spring we dig and set all our 

 cultivated roots in April. Then we need no leaf 

 mulching and we find that roots set in the spring will 

 not miss one in a hundred. They will come up better 

 and bear more seed than those set in the fall, but people 

 who buy roots or who dig wild roots cannot set in 

 the spring, as the time for spring setting is limited 

 on account of the quickness of the plant developing 

 its bud. 



"Several years ago my son and I thought we would 

 try growing ginseng. We had no experience but had 

 read up everything we could find that had been printed 

 on the subject. To make a careful start we bought 

 in the fall three hundred two-year-old roots and three 

 ounces of stratified seed that would come up the next 

 May. We selected three kinds of soil clay loam, 

 sandy loam, and slate loam in three different fields on 

 the farm made a seed bed in each field, three and a 

 half feet wide by twelve feet long, by standing boards 

 four inches wide on their edges around each bed. We 

 sowed one ounce of seed and set one hundred roots in 

 each bed, covered with leaves for the winter, fenced in 

 each bed with a board fence, and in the spring shaded 



