Some years ago good wages were made at digging wild roots but for the past few years digging has been so persistent that when a digger makes from $1.00 to $2.00 per day he thinks it is good.
Some say that the Ginseng growing business will soon be overdone and the market over-supplied and prices will go to $1.00 per pound or less for dried root. If all who engage in the business were able to successfully grow the plant such might be the case. Note the many that have failed. Several complain that their beds in the forests are infested with many ups and downs from such causes as damp blight, root rot, animals and insect pests. A few growers report that mice did considerable damage in the older beds by eating the neck and buds from the roots.
There seems to be a mistaken idea in regard to "gardens in the forest." Many prepare their beds in the forests, plant and cultivate much the same as the grower under artificial shade. While this is an improvement over the artificial shade, fertilized and thickly planted bed, it is not the way that will bring best and lasting results.
Why? Because plants crowded together will contract diseases much sooner than when scattered. One reason of many failures is that the plants were too thick. Those that can "grow" in the forests are going to be the ones that make the greatest success. Farmers, horticulturists, gardeners, trappers, hunters, guides, fishermen who have access to forest land should carefully investigate the possibilities of medicinal root culture.
Those who have read of the fortune to be made at growing Ginseng and other medicinal roots in their backyard on a small plat (say a rod or two) had best not swallow the bait. Such statements were probably written by ignorant growers who knew no better or possibly they had seed and plants for sale. Ginseng growing, at best, should be done by persons who know something of plants, their habits, etc, as well as being familiar with soil and the preparation of same for growing crops.
CHAPTER XII.
MEDICINAL QUALITIES.
In reply to E. T. Flanegan and others who wish to know how to use Ginseng as a medicine, I will suggest this way for a general home made use, says a writer in Special Crops. Take very dry root, break it up with a hammer and grind it thru a coffee mill three or four times till reduced to a fine powder. Then take three ounces of powder and one ounce of milk sugar. To the milk sugar add sixty drops of oil of wintergreen and mix all the powders by rubbing them together and bottle. Dose one teaspoonful, put into a small teacupful of boiling water. Let it stay a little short of boiling point ten minutes. Then cool and drink it all, hot as can be borne, before each meal. It may be filtered and the tea served with cream and sugar with the meal. Made as directed this is a high grade and a most pleasant aromatic tea and has a good effect on the stomach, brain and nervous system. To those who have chronic constipation, I would advise one fourth grain of aloin, taken every night, or just enough to control the constipation, while taking the Ginseng tea. If the evening dose of Ginseng be much larger it is a good safe hypnotic, producing good natural sleep.
The writer prefers the above treatment to all the whiskey and patent medicine made. To those who are damaged or made nervous by drinking coffee or tea, quit the coffee or tea and take Ginseng tea as above directed. It is most pleasant tasted and a good medicine for your stomach. I do not know just how the Chinese prepare it into medicine, but I suppose much of it is used in a tea form as well as a tincture. As it is so valuable a medicine their mode of administration has been kept a secret for thousands of years. There must be some medical value about it of great power or the Chinese could not pay the price for it. It has been thought heretofore that the Chinese were a superstitious people and Used Ginseng thru ignorance, but as we get more light on the medical value of the plant the plainer it gets that it is us fellows — the Americans — that have been and are yet in the "shade" and in a dark shade, too. We think the time not far off when it will be recognized as a medical plant and a good one, too, and its great medical value be made known to the world.