Found a New Ginseng Hotspot!

Haven't updated in awhile. The prices here are slowing climbing toward $400. Seems a lot of the dealers got stuck with some of the ginseng they paid $800 a pound for last year and demand is still down while the supply is higher. Still the price is climbing as I imagine a lot of people are holding out for better prices and it is still early.

Oh yeah the spot I found. I've been perfecting a new technique of locating new places to look for ginseng. Anyway, on my last attempt it put me into a location where I found and dug a little bit over 3 green pounds in less than 4 hours. A great find! Probably one of the most concentrated patches I have ever found as it was a fairly small section of a hollow that it was all growing in. Really big and healthy plants too. The soil was very rich and loose and deep. The digging was easy except for all the weeds and bushes and small trees. It was a great place and great soil for everything to grow I guess.

Biggest Root of 2007 so far....

Well this is the biggest ginseng root I've found so far this year. Still hoping to do better though. This root is also completely dried in this picture. I found it 3 or 4 weeks ago. It weighs 1 oz. dry.



Happy digging.

Man Finds Monster Ginseng Root

Well a few days ago it was reported that a man in Maryland found a whopping 1 pound ginseng root (green). It is said to be over 100 years old. Truly an amazing rare find in this era. They didn't say in the article how many prongs the plant had. I'm assuming a 4-prong since the guy didn't mention it.

Here's a link to the article.

Man Finds 1 Pound Ginseng Root

Happy digging.

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Recent Ginseng Root Pics

I'm adding another pic today. These are some nice roots I found recently.
I took the photo about 3 days after I found them except for the root at the top, which had already been drying for 10 days before the photo. So it has lost quite a bit of its size already.

The top (stalk,leaves,etc.) on that particular root was actually all brown and dried up. The stalk, all four prongs, and all the leaves were still there. We had an abnormally late freeze this past spring after a warm spell. It killed most all of the buds and flowers on trees. Apparently, this ginseng plant had popped up fairly early and the freeze got it. I found it in the same grassy (weedy?) area in the woods that I described in my last post. There was also a dead stalk from last year beside this years top so I missed it last year somehow.

I counted the bud scars on the two roots at the lower left and both were right at 20+ years. Not nearly the oldest I've found but not bad. Oh, the object in the center is a quarter.

Here is the photo. Click on it for a slightly larger image.



Happy digging.