Sold My Ginseng Roots

I sold all of my ginseng today. I only had 1 pound and 1 ounce dry but I got $800 a pound so I'm quite happy with that. I spent about 30-35 hours in the woods this year so $20-25/hour isn't too bad. I also sold the 18 green roots since they paying 1/3 price for green and the price was so high.

The ginseng dealer I was talking to said they only had about a third of the amount of roots they would normally have by this time. People were finding a lot less and it was drying up in the woods much faster.

Well, you might think this is the end of this blog until ginseng season comes back in next year but I intend to try to keep updating it about once a month or so. I'll be writing some articles on different topics such as finding ginseng, best places to hunt for it, growing ginseng, ginseng seeds, etc. so come back every so often. I'll also discuss any ginseng news I hear.

Got Lucky Today

I went today and found another 18 ginseng roots. I say roots because I only found maybe 9 tops and only a couple of those were still standing and had yellow leaves. It was on a steep but very short hillside covered with fallen leaves. After I spotted the two standing ginseng plants I looked very, very hard and managed to pick out the golden brown, shriveled leaves of a few more after several minutes. When I began digging them I found several other dormant roots.

The going price is over $700 a pound now.

Wild American Ginseng Prices Skyrocketing

Wow! The price dealers are paying is going up rapidly. Last year I received $365 a pound. This year it is already over $600 and climbing fast. Still waiting for some of my roots to completely dry but I think I'm going to go back out and try to find a little more at these prices.

Happy Hunting!

Ginseng Season over for me

I guess I'm done digging for the year. My best area yielded a decent amount of roots but overall I didn't do so well. I have a little over a pound of dry roots.

A combination of the late April frost and the very dry summer and fall has made the ginseng a little more scarce this year and it disappeared faster as well. The upside of this is that it appears the price is going up sharply.

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.

Beautiful Day in the Woods

Well today seemed like the first real day of Fall even if it is several days early. It was 60-65 degrees during the 4 or 5 hours I spent in the woods. As far as finding ginseng it was a rather uneventful day. Dug up maybe a dozen roots and spotted a couple dozen more smaller ones. A lot of the area just wasn't that suitable. A couple that I found were 10+ years old but had a very skinny neck and not a very sizable root for their age. But it was still a gorgeous day to be in the woods and it was nice to never break a sweat because of the cooler temperatures.

I took my camera today but didn't see anything worth taking a picture of to be honest. I do have one root I dug a couple of weeks ago I'll take a pic of and put up maybe tonight. It's the biggest one I've found so far this year.

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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