American Veneer Company is currently buying top quality standing veneer timber. We offer full payment in advance, conscientious logging practices and maximum utilization of all trees harvested.

Starting At $49.95
Ginseng Seed Kits
"Secure Order Form"

American Veneer Company was formed with the idea of blending forestry and ginseng. One of the key elements is the proper light in the woods, ginseng is a shade loving plant and over cutting is just as poor a practice as under cutting. Ginseng seeds are expensive, the labor and materials necessary for successfully growing both have to come from someplace. The proper raising of veneer quality timbers will help offset some, if not all of these expenses. A veneer quality tree is almost always at least double the value of a lumber quality tree.

Over the years I have worked as a professional timber cruiser in conjunction with American Veneer Company.  Walked a lot of woods, had the opportunity to look at a lot of different stands of timber.  When you harvest mature timber out of the woods on a select cutting type basis, you're opening up holes into the canopy.   Nature many times opens up these type of holes in the woods.  Trees get blown over, struck by lightening, etc.  When you come back in and you see that the area has filled with all kinds of nice young saplings, this is caused by a process known as compusing.  When you've cut a tree down the root structure is still intact, and it will send up saplings.  Most of the time these cut areas the saplings come in way too thick and this slows down the development process of the timber, but it creates Sweet Spots out there in the woods, open holes in the canopy that sunlight can get through.   These Sweet Spots make natural places to plant ginseng.  They also make excellent places to plant trees like walnut, cherry, white oak.  These young seedling are 2 and 3 year old seedlings are 2 - 2 and a half feet high.  When they're planted in the spring of the year they go up, straight up, trying to get to the top of the  canopy of the existing forest.   This gives them a 2 to 3 year head start over the saplings that would normally come up out of the root structure, consequently shading back those trees.  Makes an excellent place to plant young saplings where you want real nice long, clean bodied logs, no cat faces on them, and nice uniform growth.  This open area in the canopy that you create when you harvest more mature trees usually about 90 feet across.  You can regulate the area.  Many times the woods has already been cut over.  Figure out a rough circle 90 feet across in diameter.  Harvest the trees that are in that area to create a sweet spot. 

In my book I talk about 4 hours of direct oscillating sunlight. We always recommend on the east side of the woods, on the northeast side of the woods, so the plants don’t get too much light. Been thinking about what Dad told me years ago about hunting wild ginseng and sweet spots. You walk in on one of them, you can just feel it there, but the deer trails have a tendency to go from one of these sweet spots to, another if you follow them along. Of course, hunting for wild ginseng along deer trails, and old timers trick, but when the deer get to these sweets spots, they’re looking for the ginseng berries to eat them. Well, they eat the berries but the seeds pass right through the deer, consequently they’re doing some real nice work.  These sweet spots can be created.  When you get over on that west side slope, if you're in there and you’re opening up areas about 90’ across, you can grow some awful nice ginseng and young trees. If you’re up there in the northwest part of your woods, you can open up even more areas. You can almost open up areas on that northwest side twice that much, 180’ across. Look at your more mature trees that should be harvested. There is a picture on this page of a couple old black oaks in the middle a of real nice sugar maple saplings. Now there’s a case where those two trees should be harvested. That’s naturally sugar maple in there. They’ll take off and go for the sun. It’d be a super super nice little place to plant some ginseng, maybe this next season I’ll get to it. But at any rate, growing veneer quality, good forestry, and ginseng always goes hand in hand.

5 Pound Ginseng Seed Special"
"Glacial Gold"
  "Ginseng Seed Kit  $299.95"
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      A Good Commercial Start

Includes everything you need to start growing your own Ginseng: Five Pounds (Appo. 35,000 Seeds) of Stratified Genetically Cross Bred Ginseng Seeds, Including Woods Grown, "Ginseng Growers Guide" by, Michael Hunter, Two Soil Testing Kits, Performs 20 Tests for Proper PH (Proper PH for Ginseng is 5.5 to 6.5) and 20 Survey Flags (These Metal Survey Flags Draw Static Electricity During Storms and this releases the Nitrogen Trapped in The Decomposing Forest Floor).  Should be Planted on about 22,000 square feet.

Over harvesting any woods at any stage of development is always a mistake in hardwoods. It’s not a mistake under different circumstances growing for different reasons. But if you’re gonna grow veneer quality timber, good forestry practices are an absolute must. Now here I recommend very highly the Stewardship Incentive Program. Now this is a government program and I realize "government involvement not to cool", but this is a terrific guideline. I have studied a lot of these reports and still do. This does not obligate you, but it gives you something to follow and it makes real good sense.  Some areas there’s even up to $10,000 federal subsidy available. That’s up to an individual. Here in Michigan, we’ve contacted the Department of Soil Conservation and they are sending  me a copy of it. It varies from one state to another. It’s just like your ginseng laws. Every state seems to have a different set of rules. Somebody out there ought to gather them all up and find them someplace where I can put them on the web site where people could look them up.

Starting At $49.95
Ginseng Seed Kits
"Secure Order Form"