Ginseng has been grown and harvested in Asia for centuries, and it was one of the first natural resources to be gathered and sold abroad after Europeans first began to colonize North America.
Thanks to the intense demand of the Chinese for American ginseng, the harvesting of ‘seng roots quickly became one of the most common ways to make money in the Appalachian Mountain and Upper Midwest regions of the United States.
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries ginseng roots were gathered by the wagon load in the “hills and hollers” of the Appalachians, but today most of the wild ginseng that was so prevalent in the woods back then is gone.
Nowadays the best way to make money by selling ginseng is to plant your own crop and cultivate it. Make no mistake about it, growing a ginseng crop takes a lot of work and it takes several years for a crop to mature enough for digging, but the financial rewards can be substantial.
Although it only grows under very specific conditions in the wild, you can plant and grow ginseng in most parts of the country as long as you can simulate its natural growing habitat. In a nutshell, ‘seng does best in a cool and moist, but well-drained wooded area that receives filtered morning sunlight. I’ve seen ginseng planted on hillsides and in pasture fields, and it always did well as long as some type of structure was erected to filter out a good portion of the sunlight that struck the ginseng patch.
As with everything else in life, there are no guarantees that you’ll get rich selling this amazing herb, but it sure is fun and the potential is indeed great. If you ever decide to give it a try you’ll find a complete tutorial for planting, growing and selling ginseng at Grow-Ginseng.com.
About the author: Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE.COM and Grow-Ginseng.com.
Credits: Photo courtesy of Chloe Fan.