TOPIC: Business Plans

Fellows,
I really appreciate your thoughts and expertise about this and since I'm still 3-4 years away from giving it a try I'll wish all of you that will be getting there before me a lot of growing luck with your plans.
There is one or two other things that I will mention that I want to try this coming year. This doesn't exactly fall under \"business plans\" but probably has more to do with growing plans. Whitjr, bear with me, since I'm in your thread.
When I grew peaches for many years we learned that using Calcium Nitrate was good on soils that were some what acidic and it would not cause Nitrogen burn like other Ammonium type fertilzers. I think that I want to try some of it \"hand scattered\" on new plantings in late winter to kick start plants for the first year and place Calcium into the soil. I'm hoping that goes well with bone meal and Gypsum that I spread on the ground when I did the Hankins and rake and scatter plantings. I have never sprayed any of my older plantings before, but since it seems to be critical to hold back disease, I believe that I will try some of the organic fungicide methods as well.
Hugh

350 hours is a lot of back breaking work in a short amount of time. So, season starts Sept 1st most places, if you don't live to far north then tops don't die back until 3rd or 4th week of Oct. That would give you around 50+/- days to harvest. 350 divided by 8 hours a day is ~44 days, so yes if things went well, didn't rain too much and your back could stand it, it would be doable. Thinking of the payoff sure would make my back feel better. I wish/hope to have that problem someday.

mhowa

Don't really have what I would call business plans myself.

Taking a much more relaxed view of my planting and potential harvest later on.

I just plain old enjoy it, even though there is some work to it.

I am perfectly ok with just planting 2-4 pounds of seed each year and reaping what ever becomes of that later on.

Would like to have some supplemental income in retirement (about 12 years out now). Hoping to at least make enough to pay for a nice vacation yearly and if I get more than that - Yahoo !

Good Luck to all you guys that are taking a more serious look at it.

I hope you all do extremely well !

TNhunter

mhowa

Up here in Maine, there is no season for Wild Ginseng. They let us harvest our Wild Simulated roots year round.

I could start harvesting roots when they emerge in early May and continue to harvest for about five months until late Oct, when the plants start to wilt. That would be about 21 weeks to harvest roots each year.

Plenty of time to harvest roots in Maine.

And I agree, My back hurts just thinking about it. But the thought of the money eases the pain.

classicfur

Latt wrote:

Whitjr,
Those are some tough questions not knowing your overall goals. All I know is I have planted a boatload wild simulated style and I really feel I do not have much to show for it at this point. Every year it continues to thin itself out as it will do when planting wild simulated style.

I am switching to woodsgrown from here on out. I know many disagree with this. I will use fungicide here and there and I will use round up the year prior to planting a new site to get rid of the weeds prior to planting rake and scatter method.

I have been at this for 4 or 5 years and it get frustrating when planting wild simulated. You will see your efforts dwindle down to some sparse plants here and there after 4 to 5 years. I hate seeing so many little seng plants simply not make it. I know this is the way mother nature intends it to be but it still takes the wind out your sails during the process to see the once carpet of green little seng plants turn into one little plant here and there. Left to mother nature it will happen this way no doubt about it!

I am not against planting wild simulated style at all. I am glad I have planted over 50 lbs this way. I am looking forward thou to planting some nice new seng the same way but giving the majority of the seng a chance to survive.

Not sure if this helps any but it may give you an idea of what to expect if growing it wild simulated style.
Good luck,
Latt

You are right Latt,
You don't get much of a return on letting nature take it's course. I know from experience.

I'm like you I think next year my son and I will go for the more controlled method.
Maybe plant in raised ridges.

Some good thinking here, guys.

The suggestion of researching from the Persons book is a great one as well. I havn't looked at it for some months now. His section of tables is very good. in thinking about the business of it all....

My partner and I are both looking into our 60's.... And doing this as a nice suppliment to retirement income.

I'm planning a new tool to use for this year's work... A backpack sprayer. I'm also planning on using the Nutri-grow solution for adding the soil amendments since my sill under the cleared areas has some obvious needs. This sprayer will get the needed soil amendments in quicker I think, for plant metabolization.

I ordered my backpack sprayer yesterday. It's a 4 gal. Capacity sprayer, altho that sounds like a lot of weight to me. I'm thinking to fill it w/ 2 gals at the time.

I got a USA made .Chapin sprayer.... Generates 16 - 20 psi, and fully disassemble wand/nozzle.

Now on to the Nutrigrow... And to get it onto the ground before the sang comes up this year. Hmmm... Maybe it will act as a deer repellant? we'll see!

Whitjr,

I think you will really like that sprayer. Especially with the disassemble feature at the wand/nozzle.

I have one that holds 3 gal. and usually fill it to two gal. If things are nearby, three gal. is real doable. ... Just a small tip here: I have a deck around part of my cabin, and I set the sprayer at mid-back height on that deck. I fill and mix right there, then I just step down on to the ground, and back right up to the shoulder straps. It slips right on real easy at that height, and I simply walk away with it.

I used it with Round Up this past summer, and did mass murder on a bunch of white snakeroot.

I have never used Nutri-grow, but I did clean out my sprayer really well, and treated my soil with an extremely mild dosage (1 tbsp/gal) of epsom salts. I did that after my soil test late last spring. I will do a re-test late winter 2012. The sprayer worked really slick for that application. A nice even mist. The one I have requires almost constant pumping, for even misting, but with the pump handle on the left, it is not bothersome at all.

I wonder if somehow a person could come up with a calcium mix? ... Dunno.

Bill

I had a very bad cold over the new year's weekend, and all thru last week. Took time off from my \"real Job\" and recouperated. While I was doing that, I wrote a bunch of things, and developed a nice plan complete with collums and such.

This is where vision meets the cold hard math of it all. Sometimes my vision of things doesn't like the cold hard math a'tall!

anyway, I focused generating some revenue this year - for the first time in three years- from the water plants endeavor... and it looks like the revenue stream from the 'sang will have to wait.

Sounds good. Revenue stream from seng is a long term endeavor anyway. What we do today will not pay off until 8 to 10 years as you already know with seng. It is awesome you have an interest in water plants and can make extra money doing something you like. I too am going to continue strongly with seng ready to reap the rewards in the distant future.
I am also going to dabble in growing some Oyster mushrooms in a controlled indoor environment.
Classicfur has me stoked about dabbling and trying my hand with some Bee Hives. Since he has posted the topic on the forum I have been studying up on it have visited a local bee farm that does 7.5 mill a year gross. They are so big now they only sell wholesale and closed their smaller retail gift store. They have 7 full time employees now. Amazing to me and they started off small with just a dream.

My wife thinks I am nuts but if you have a passion for something it is well worth the effort. Besides you never know until you try it.
Good luck on the water plants.
Latt