Collecting and Germinating Ramp Seeds

Depending on where you are located, ramps are starting to yellow or soon will be. If you look closely at a patch of ramps, you will probably see flower buds just beginning to show on some of them. Now is the time to plan for seed collection. When ramp seeds are mature, the leaves of the plant are usually gone and the base of the plant is often covered up by the foliage of other plants. It is not uncommon for the only evidence of the ramps to be the seed heads. They can be REALLY difficult to find unless you know exactly where to look.

So, if you want to collect and sow ramp seeds, I suggest that mark your ramp patches now. This can be done with flagging, rock formations, or you could just get a GPS coordinate for the location. Then, in late August to early September, you can return to collect the mature seed. Be sure to wait until the seeds are black.

There are several methods for germinating ramp seeds, and a number of them are described in my book. But here is the easiest procedure that has worked for me. As quoted in the book, "Collect the mature, black seed from the plants in late August before the seeds fall to the ground; then, either immediately plant the seeds in a nursery bed or store the seeds in paper envelopes in a cool, dry place until you are ready to plant them in a moist site. Little seedlings should emerge after exposure to one warm season and one cold season in the soil. This usually means after 18 months. If you planted the fresh seed early enough in the season for the seeds to get a long period of warm temperatures before the soil cooled down for the winter, you should obtain good emergence the first spring after sowing-in about seven months."

There is a whole section devoted to ramps in the book Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals.

Let's Grow Ramps!!

My first ramp research plots.

"In 1998, when I first started growing ramps, there were only a few individuals in North America producing ramps for commercial purposes. I relied heavily on their experiences to initiate my own successful ramp cultivation efforts and studies. Since that time we have learned a great deal about them, and people are successfuly growing ramps all over North America." That is the opening paragraph in Chapter 15: Ramp Growing Instructions: Methods, Care, Protection, Harvesting and Marketing in our book "Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals". This is ramps season and this is the perfect time to start growing your own ramps. The way I got my first ramp patch started was to buy ramps at a ramps festival and plant them out.

As described in that same chapter, "Choose an appropriate planting site, as described earlier [in the chapter]. Rake off the leaf litter, till the soil, add any needed amendments, and work them in. Make raised beds if you plan to do so. To plant your bulbs or transplants, dig little trenches 4-5" deep across your beds or planting areas. Spacing these trenches 4-6" apart gives the plants some room to multiply. I make trenches by simply dragging a hand trowel across the bed. Set dormant bulbs approximately 3" apart and 3" deep, with the growing point facing up. Cover with soil so just the very tip of the bulb shows above the soil surface. Transplant leafed-out plants the same depth they had been growing. Finally, cover both bulbs and transplants with several inches of mulch. Transplants will usually reach harvestable size in four to six years."

The chapter includes two growers' stories. The first one is about the Smoky Mountain Native Plants Association. Here is a short video (link) of them explaining how to sustainably harvest ramps. The second story is about Glen Facemire of Ramp Farm Specialities in West Virginia. In 2008, Glen wrote and published a wonderful little book on ramps called "Having Your Ramps and Eating Them, Too." 

All this information and so much more is available in my book "Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals".