**Permaculture Principle: Value the marginal**

American ginseng patch slowly maturing

Every time I find myself at the ginseng patch, I'm reminded of the permaculture principle "use edges and value the marginal".

The area in which the ginseng is planted I think of as zone 4, a place on the homestead I visit only a few times a year. Ironically, it's only a few dozen feet away from my door on the north side of the house. Being so seldomly visited and shaded, I never considered the area useful for growing anything, basically a marginal area between zone 4 and zone 5 (zone 5 is an area left to be totally natural and only observed).

When a friend offered up some ginseng seed suddenly, I was struggling to think of a place to plant it. Initially, my plan was to try several patches with slight variations in the conditions to see what worked best. However, the demands of the homestead left me with small window of time before it was too late to plant. I ended up planting all the seeds in this one bed.

To my surprise, the ginseng has continued to grow and now this marginal area in zone 4 at the homestead is producing some potential value with the ginseng.