Golden Seal Plants.
Remove the brush in the early spring, but let the leaves remain. The plants will come up thru them all right. This plant grows best in a soil made up entirely of decayed vegetation, such as old leaf beds and where old logs have rotted and fallen back to earth. If weeds or grass begin to grow in your beds pull them up before they get a start. Be careful to do this. Do not hoe or dig up the soil any way, The fibrous roots spread out in all directions just under the mulch. To dig this up would very much injure the plants.
I think the plants should be set in rows about one foot apart, and the plants three or four inches apart in the rows. This would require about 1,000 plants to set one square rod. My Golden Seal garden is in a grove of young locust trees that are rapidly growing into posts and cash. The leaves drop down upon my Golden Seal and mulch it sufficiently. The locust belongs to the Leguminous family of plants, so while the leaves furnish the necessary shade they drink in the nitrogen from the atmosphere and deposit great stores of it in the soil. This makes the soil porous and loose and gives the plant a very healthy dark green appearance.
We have only to follow the natural manner of the growth of the Golden Seal to be successful in its culture. Select a piece of sloping land, so as to be well drained, on the north or northeast side of the hill — virgin soil if possible. Let the soil be rich and loamy, full of leaf mold and covered with rotting leaves and vegetation. This is the sort of soil that Golden Seal grows in, naturally.
It is hard to fix up a piece of ground, artificially, as nature prepares it, for a wild plant to grow in. So select a piece if possible that nature has prepared for you. Do not clear your land. Only cut away the larger timber. Leave the smaller stuff to grow and shade your plants. There is no shade that will equal a natural one for Ginseng or Golden Seal.
Now, take a garden line and stretch it up and down the hill the distance you want your bed to be wide. Mark the place for the row along the line with a mattock, and dig up the soil to loosen it, so as to set the plants, or, rather, plant the roots easily. With a garden dibble, or some other like tool make a place for each plant. Set the plants 4 to 6 inches apart in the row. The crown of the plant or bud should be set about 1 inch beneath the surface.
Firm the earth around the plant carefully. This is an important point and should be observed in setting any plant. More plants are lost each year by carelessly leaving the earth loose over and around the roots than from any other cause. Do not leave a trench in the row. This may start a wash. Let the rows be about 1 foot apart. If land is no item to you, the rows may be further apart. They will, if properly cared for, in a few years, by sending up sprouts from the roots, fill up the end completely.