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now I can look at the Gin
thing so these are American J sing dying
down they turn of rather unique shade of
uh gold as they die down that's one of
the top times of year when you can hunt
for dinin sing with some hope of finding
it the other of course is when the fruit
is on there the bright red
berries so let's see what this one looks
like as you can see see lots more of the
crinkle root here starting to make a
carpet there's
one or two last berries of Jin
sing this is a nice fairly mature spe
big
leaves
so jining is an expensive herb
for a number of
reasons the price is going to go up to
$800 a
pound this year and that's the amount
that the person who goes in the woods
and collects it can get for
it then it gets resold and resold and
resold God only knows what it costs by
the time it gets to
China
J sing
is endangered and with a price like $800
a pound it's going to
be
uh a lot more than
endangered it's going to kind of
disappear one reason it's expensive is
it's very slow
growing
people say that it's uh doesn't reach
its full medicinal potency until
it's at least 7 years
old it doesn't like transplanting very
much sort of resents
disturbance the SE Take 2 years to
germinate so if I plant these seeds they
won't come up next spring they'll come
up the spring
after they need to go
through a winter then a summer then
another
winter that's another reason why it's
expensive and then we looked at the both
the crinkle root and the golden seal and
I said we could cut them into pieces and
you'd get new plants that's not true of
jining so there's the bud for next
year what is true is that and this is
called the neck of the
plant right okay so you see all these
little grooves every one of those
represents one year of
growth so here's the
bud that's how much it got bigger this
year that was last last year two years
ago the leaf came off right
there last year the leaf came off right
there this year the leaf came off right
here next year so every time it's going
up a little bit you can actually count
how old the plant is by counting these
little
rings and this one actually started way
back
here it grew whatever eight or nine
years and then it put out this little
root kept on growing this is probably 15
16 years
old so if you get to the point
where you have the bud and you have some
Roots what I could do is Sever this
right
here and
replant that neck with those
roots and it'll make a new
plant uh and then I could Harvest this
much of it or I could s it right here
and replant it with this
included usually they have to be five or
six years old before you can do this
because they they won't a younger plant
will not have any Roots up here it'll
just have the main root and the neck and
the stem so I like to harvest plants
that are 10 or 15 years old and then I
can replant the neck and not kill the
plant but I can't multiply it I'm just
going to still have one plant right I
can't chop it into a bunch of pieces I
couldn't plant this if I just planted
that nothing would happen it doesn't
have any bud on
it unfortunately this is illegal uh in
order to Market if you want to Market
jins sing you have to leave the neck on
so that the buyer can count how old it
is the way the government is trying to
protect ginsing is to say that you can
only Market jining that's I forget what
three years old or four or five and the
only way you can verify that is by the
neck so unfortunately the best way to
preserve the Gins sing is not uh legal
if you were trying to grow this and
Market it on the other hand if you want
to grow jins sing and eat it yourself or
make value added products or whatever
then it doesn't matter which is what I
do uh so I could Harvest this and
replant
that which I suppose now that I dug it
up I should do that
that yeah we'll just do
that as I say it kind of resents
disturbance I could replant this whole
thing and I didn't really break any
roots and it might survive all right
but wouldn't be very happy so what we're
going to do is just cut it right there
I'll cut it again right
here and we will
replant tuck it right down in there and
it can be pretty
deep if that bud was 6 in deep it
wouldn't be any problem it would come
right
up so there we go
oops want to lose
those then we can take
these
fruits and replant those each fruit will
e have either one or two seeds and the
amount of fruits that it makes depends
on how strong the plant
is it'll make a a ball like that but
it'll only set young plants will just
set one or two fruits as they get older
the head of fruits will get bigger and
bigger what I like to do with them
is eat them
then plant
seeds they've actually found some
compounds in the fruit that are not in
any other part of the plant that are
being investigated for diabetes and
obesity and things like that a wonderful
plant everyone should grow it
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