Complete Ginseng Growers Manual

A Well Kept Secret: Ginseng Farming--100 years of American Ginseng Prices by D F Curran Available on Amazon.com In a well-tended garden, shaded from the sun by carefully constructed networks of wooden lath, invisible to planes or helicopters, the green leaves, and red berries of this plant prosper. The farmers who grow it keep their operations as secret as they can. They can earn more than $100,000 per acre. Sound like something illegal? Actually these farmers are cultivating a legal crop, American ginseng. And though the prices fluctuate as with any crop this exotic crop can be worth as much as $70 plus dollars per pound and 2500 pounds can be taken off a single acre. A small group of people have been making money from this crop since the earliest settlers came to this country. In 1716 a Jesuit missionary, Joseph François Lafitau read another Jesuit's account of a fabulous plant that was used in the Orient as medicine. Lafitau described the plant to his friends the Iroquois. His friends showed him that the plant was growing right by his cabin and the trade in American ginseng was born. John Jacob Astor started his vast fortune with a permit to trade from the East India Company and an idea. He had little money to invest but convinced a ship owner to split the profits on a shipment of wild American ginseng to China. The ship went off and was gone for months. Astor and the shipowner were about to give up hope when the ship returned with what today would be more than one million dollars in profit. As the knowledge of wild ginseng's value went up, so did competition. The plant became harder and harder to find. People began trying to grow the plant in gardens. But due to the finicky nature of the plant cultivation was tricky. The seeds for instance have an 18 month dormant period before sprouting. It was only when some growers noticed the plants coming up a year after they were expected did cultivation get off the ground. By the turn of the 20th century small ginseng plots could be found all over the country. George Stanton of Onondaga, New York, who is often called today "The father of American Ginseng" started a small magazine called Special Crops in 1903. Due to Stanton's efforts and the efforts of New York State Plant Pathologist H. H. Whetzel, scientific ginseng culture was born. Ginseng was still a tricky plant to grow, but with shared information more and more growers were able to successfully grow it. World War II, however, almost wiped out ginseng grow

שנה

2012

הוצאה

D F Curran Productions

מהדורות

4

עמודים

158

ISBN

9781467919951

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata