Ginseng Dreams by Kristin Johannsen

Author:Kristin Johannsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2006-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

FIVE

“COME BACK WHEN YOU HAVE

A REAL CRIME TO REPORT”

Previous page: This hunting goods store in rural Virginia was the site of a long-running undercover operation that aimed to put a stop to ginseng poaching.

Dr. Terry Jones is the kind of scientist who has actual mud on his boots. When I finally catch up with him in his office at the Robinson Experimental Station, the University of Kentucky’s agricultural station in the eastern mountains, he’s in jeans and a work shirt, just come in from a project growing blueberries on reclaimed strip-mined land. The berries do well up there, he says. They like the acid soil.

I ask about his research work. “I tend to do fruits,” he tells me. “I also look at vegetables. I do tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins, and we do a little bit with cut hydrangeas for floral markets. Now and then cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, but I haven’t done those for a couple years. But we look at other crops that people might raise and sell commercially.” What he doesn’t do is ginseng—not after what happened four years ago.

An older man with curly silver hair and a neat moustache, Jones often looks like he’s holding back a wry smile as he tells me the story. Robinson Station’s mission, he explains, is to develop practical agricultural techniques that will be of benefit to Appalachian farmers, a group that’s had an even worse time than the general run of U.S. farm families. In recent years, the market for tobacco, once an economic mainstay of the region, has been in a tailspin. In searching for a replacement source of income, ginseng seemed a natural choice. So Jones devised a study to determine the best soil chemistry for ginseng, to help growers produce bigger harvests of valuable roots.

“We found the perfect spot,” he says. It was out in a mountain forest owned by the university. “We made beds, cleared underbrush, we spent three or four days getting the site all prepared. And what we wanted to look at was whether different pHs had an effect on the germination, growth, and survival of ginseng and goldenseal. So we went ahead and put them on beds, which is going to give a slightly artificial look to the root, because the ground’s softer. Plus then the roots are worth less money and we thought maybe somebody wouldn’t steal it. I was worried from the day we started, but you have hopes. . . .” A flicker of a smile. “So we prepared the site, and then we adjusted the pH on it.”

They planted the same number of ginseng seeds in plots with different soil pH, and waited to see what would happen. Everything went brilliantly. At first all the plants grew well, but within a few years it was obvious which type of soil was the most favorable. All of the biggest plants—three- and four-prongers—were in the same plots, pointing to the optimal pH. This information, if published in a scientific journal, would be extremely useful to growers across the continent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.