TOPIC: Popularity of Ginseng in the Northeast?

Hi 97HD,

I'm a fellow VT digger and dealer. Please contact me during the season when you have some roots to sell. It sounds like you're in a pretty nice patch, which means you will have some quality roots. I'll be starting this year paying $900/lb-$1100/lb (dry). Good luck out there.

John Jacobs
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Mortis wrote:

The only truely \"breathtaking\" woods in my area that was fully loaded with baby ginseng plants, an area I would visit each season to dig a few adults, was logged out about a month ago. And completely strip logged, leaving no tree taller than 6 foot standing. It was very hard to accept that my magic spot is gone forever.

Mortis,

Logging kills some Ginseng but not all. The Ginseng that does survive, will lay dormant until the shade canopy or until the faster developing plants that grow first in clear-cuts (mostly Blackberry and other briars, small scrub bushes, etc.) grow tall and thick enough to provide them enough shade to emerge and survive. In some clear-cut locations it could take 5 years before a few of them emerge and up to 10 or more years for others to emerge. While many younger plants can't and will not survive longer periods of dormancy, older plants can and will usually survive periods of dormancy from 10 years to as much as 20 years. This is a protection mechanism that Ginseng apparently developed long ago to protect itself and to propagate it's species over millions of years. Before, they only had to protect themselves from what Mother Nature threw at them but in the last say 400 to 500 years, they have had to protect themselves from what Mother Nature and Man has thrown at them and yet, many plants made it through and continue to survive and propagate the species. Keep an eye on that location and I believe that given enough time, you will be pleasantly surprised to see some Ginseng plants starting to return to this area, then more and more and more as the years progress and shade continues to fill in. Tip, start out looking in heavy Blackberry and other briar patches and heavier scrub bush patches.


Frank

Thanks Frank, I'll keep my hopes up each year when I stop back to check out the \"woods\". I'll have a big smile on my face the first time I find a little plant struggling up through the briars.

Mortis wrote:

Thanks Frank, I'll keep my hopes up each year when I stop back to check out the \"woods\". I'll have a big smile on my face the first time I find a little plant struggling up through the briars.

Mortis,

Good luck! I will say this, I have found some of the nicest plants and roots that I ever dug in West Virginia, either below or above logging roads and mainly in Blackberry briar thickets that were so thick, that no one else would venture into them to look for Ginseng. Besides carrying, my' big Buck knife and Ginseng digging hoe, I usually pick up a good and sturdy but dead stick (1 1/2\" in diameter and 5 to 6 feet long) to use as a walking stick and I can use it to beat back the briars and the others I cut with my' knife. Clear-cuts will often grow up first in Blackberry briars, scrub bushes, new tree growth and especially small Locust trees that can really be a pain if you grab or run into them. These heavier patches of all of these, is where Ginseng will likely emerge first and then as the smaller trees become larger and larger and start to provide more shade and smother out the briars and scrub bushes, then more and more of the Ginseng that survived in dormancy, will gradually start to emerge. As I warned of before, be aware that many of these re-emerging plants will now have much smaller roots and may have degraded top-wise, so you may want to wait a few years before harvesting any of them.


Frank

Yes, that makes sense. I guess a lot of undergrowth can provide the same shady conditions that the big trees used to before they were cut. However in this area I know that 2-3 other hunters other than myself had permission to dig there, so probably 90% of the seng left on that farm were babies, 4 years and younger. So even if they do all come back, it would take them another 3-4 years to get going again before digging would be worthwhile.

Although I don't personally know the other hunters that the farmer gave permission to, I can say that they were equally good stewards of the woods as I tried to be.