Thrifty Golden Seal Plant.
When you have finished setting your bed, cover it with a good mulch of rotten leaves from the forest and throw upon them some brush to keep the wind from blowing them away. By spring the leaves will settle down compactly and you will be pleased to see your plants grow luxuriously. October and November are the best months of the year in which to set Golden Seal plants. They are, also, the months in which it should be dug for the market. It may be set in the spring if the plants are near by. The roots will always grow if not allowed to dry before transplanting.
If your bed does not supply you with plants fast enough by suckering, you may propagate plants by cutting the roots into pieces about one-fourth inch long, leaving as many fibrous roots on each piece as possible. These cuttings should be made in September or October and placed in boxes of sand over winter. The boxes should be kept in a cellar where they will not freeze. By spring these pieces will have developed a bud and be ready for transplanting, which should be done just as early as the frost leaves the ground so it can be worked.
All the culture needed by this plant is to mulch the beds with forest leaves each fall and keep it clear of grass and field weeds. Wild weeds do not seem to injure it.
Golden Seal transplants easily and responds readily to proper cultivation. There is no witchcraft in it. The seeds ripen in a large red berry in July to germinate, if planted at once, the next spring. The fibrous roots, if stratified in sand loam in the autumn, will produce fine plants. Any good, fresh, loamy soil, that is partially shaded will produce a good Golden Seal.
You want soil that is in good tilth, full of humus and life, and free from grasses and weeds. It will stand a great deal more sunlight than Ginseng. It will also produce a crop of marketable roots much quicker than Ginseng. There is no danger of an over supplied market, as the whims of a nation changing, or of a boycott of a jealous people. I have my little patch of Golden Seal that I am watching and with which I am experimenting.
I want to say right here that you do not need a large capital to begin the culture of these plants that are today being exploited by different parties for cultivation. Just get a little plot of virgin soil, say six yards long by one yard wide and divide it into two equal lots. Then secure from the woods or from some one who has stock to sell about 100 plants of each, then cultivate or care for your apron garden and increase your plantation from your beds as you increase in wisdom and in the knowledge of the culture of these plants.
The Bible says "Despise not the day of small things." Do not, for your own sake, invest a lot of money in a "Seng" or Seal plantation or take stock in any exploiter's scheme to get rich quick by the culture of these plants. Some one has written a book entitled "Farming by Inches." It is a good book and should be in every gardener's library. Now, if there be any crops that will pay a big dividend on the investment farmed by inches "Seng" and Seal are the crops.