Grow your own tropical trees *LINK*

Re: Grow your own tropical trees

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Um, let's see - I'd be 80. No, scratch that one off my list.

Jeremy, Matt - invest in this one, and you'll have bragging rights over all of us.

Well, if you believe...

Jonathan Kaplan (OR)

>If you believe their projections, the first major harvest (for teak) is expected to occur at between 6-9 years of age for the trees, removes about 40 trees (of the 85 expected to have lived that long from your original 100), and is expected to yield around 1000bf of lumber (again for teak, if you started with a total of 100 trees). So you wouldn't have to wait until you were 80 to start seeing *some* wood. :)

jk

I looked at this in depth

Tom Sontag - St. Louis

>My day job is as an investment guy, so I looked at this from all angles some time ago. History will show that timber is one of the better pure hedges against inflation, so if you believe Greenspan's easy money will have consequences like that, it might be a great idea.

I was unable to come to a conclusion about taking delivery of a couple thousand bf of teak or cocobolo. Might conceivably become a problem. Conceivably.

But I did manage to come up with the perfect portfolio: a 100 teak (the blue chips), 100 cocobolo (growth stock), and 100 mixed (balanced diversified portfolio). Cost about $10,000. Wish I could use the 401k...

Re: I looked at this in depth

Mark Schroeder (Norfolk, VA)

>I don't know about a 401K, but I have made this investment through a Roth IRA. You need to find a broker that will handle self-directed IRA's for non-stock and bond assets. I use the Equity Trust Company in Elyria, OH, but there probably are others.

Re: I looked at this in depth

mm83targa

>I met Steve and Sherry (the owner/operators) at a woodworking show. After holding out for a year or so, I finally decided to take the plunge. I own 100 teak trees from the 1999 planting. Even if their projections are very optimistic (which I don't believe is the case), I still think that it will be a rather worthwhile investment.

I plunged in a while back

Paul M in San Diego

>I too got 100 trees back in 1999, but they were the mixed variety (not just teak). I couldn't find fault with their projections. I saw a crosscut of a 7year old teak from their plantation, and it had some hugely fat growth rings. Amazing how fast that stuff grows. It will never be top-grade at that growth rate, but it looked just like the plantation teak I've seen at the local lumber yards for > $10 per board foot.