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.