2020 Harvest Season is Complete!

Our experimental outdoor field was less than 90 individual plants this year. We grew five varieties in this field. The surprising favorite at the farm was the Wuf Wuf x Cherrywine 51. It matured early, grew tall but resisted being blown over. The cured flower is a delicate bouquet of sweet notes mixed with a fresh spring breeze.

This grow plot was far from ideal, with inadequate light and a walnut tree grove nearby, but we wanted to see how things performed in a less than ideal area. With no plastic used for our rows, no herbicide or pesticide what-so-ever, and no tilling done to the area, it certainly was an unusual planting. The weeds where suppressed using hay. They did grow fairly tall by the end of the season but the hemp seemed unbothered by them. Outdoors, our main pest issue is always caterpillars. Therefore, the early maturing varieties are key. That way, you can harvest the flower before the caterpillars really start to damage your plant material because their lifecycles are such that they start to chow down hard around September 20. For fertilizer, we used Espoma Plant Tone. An organic fertilizer based on turkey waste. Only about two cups was used per plant at the beginning of the season. This seemed to work well enough, however we may have pushed the limits of minimalism a bit far with that move. Another round of fertilization later in the season may have been beneficial. I would recommend this no- till method. It was low maintenance for us and the yields where still there. It may not appear as neat and tidy to the eye but the results where good.