Last year wasn’t great for Canadian ginseng. Hopefully, this year will be better:
“Ontario ginseng growers are keeping their fingers crossed that this year’s crop will continue to enjoy a much better growing season than the soggy, mouldy wet finish that wreaked havoc on the 2006 crop.
“It has been hot and dry through much of the growing season so far,” Doug Bradley, president of the Ontario Ginseng Association, said Tuesday.
“From the top, the crop looks great, but with not so much rain in the past few weeks, the roots have to work hard to keep what’s above ground in good shape.”
With very little rain in the past two weeks, most growers have to water a lot, Bradley said. Like many of the 220 member growers who have a collective 6,000 acres under shade throughout Brant, Norfolk, Oxford and Elgin counties, he has completed two cycles of irrigation on all his acreage.
Some growers are getting ready for a third one, depending on location.
“At least it’s better to have to water than to have too much rain,” said Bradley.
So, experience has gone much the same as the first few months of the 2006 growing season. It was unremitting autumn rains in the final month that dashed many hopes, leaving growers to harvest a collective 3.5 million pounds, about 500,000 pounds less than expected.
In consequence, the association is also down about a dozen growers from a little more than 230 last year. “
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