The ginseng is a slow growing plant and growing it takes time and patience. At three to four years old the plant will produce seeds when it has grown two root prongs. It is important that you wait until the plant is sexually mature before you harvest it because otherwise the plant does not produce seeds and you run the risk of extinction of your ginseng population because you have no means to plant more ginseng. As the knowledge of the herbal properties of the plant spread, the demand for ginseng was greatly increased. To compensate for the dwindling supply of wild ginseng, cultivation was introduced to prevent the extinction of the herb. Some of the earliest cultivation grounds were set in Southeastern Manchuria, which is now commonly known as North Korea. As the wild American Ginseng grew scarce, its cultivation eventually started in the 19th century, most of the American ginseng was being specially grown mostly in Wisconsin and Ohio. Now a days it is rare to find wild ginseng on the market, the majority that is on sale are grown in plantations farms. The three most common cultivation grounds in America are in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. Because ginseng is a plant native to the forest, growers strive to make their fields as like to the forest as possible. To cultivate ginseng, growers collect ripe seeds from plants that have begun to grow fruit in around the third year of growing. Growers have to harvest the blooms containing the seeds very carefully so that they don't break the bloom resulting in wind blown seeds. When the seeds are removed from the fruit, they are washed thoroughly then put in barrels of slightly moist sand or sawdust. This is the "Stratification process" it aims to preserve and incubate the seeds for one year before they are planted. The next fall the seeds are taken and planted on the hills in "sang gardens". Three to four seeds are planted one inch deep in five feet wide beds of soil.