Industrial Hemp

[pmcgrady]

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[Cole_Robbie]

The applications are now live in Illinois. My cousin got one for our farm two days ago.

[Ironwood]

It's one thing to plant on a large scale but how do you harvest it? Last year in Colorado they had a heck of a time with it clogging machines. It is very sticky. Custom equipment is coming but until then....

[Cole_Robbie]

Hand harvesting is the norm. No herbicides are approved yet for use with hemp, so hand weeding will also be required.

[Cole_Robbie]

We only got a fraction of our field planted, coming right in at the minimum of one half acre. The plants are on landscape fabric, the uv stabilized stuff. We never tilled, plowed, or turned the soil over, just mowed and put the fabric down with staples. This land has been a cow field for as long as anyone can remember, at least the 1930s. I think it is safe to say it has never been cultivated. I used a pinch of time release fertilizer and a handful of compost in each planting hole. Unless they start showing deficiencies, that will be all the fertilizer they get, and the soil will do the rest.

[natural]

Very nice looking plants.

Bill

[lexxluthor]

Real beauties.

[wildcat62]

They look awesome. Are you growing it for the seed ?

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks all. And yes, making feminized seed is my plan.

Here are a few of my plant starts in the greenhouse earlier this summer.

[Salsacharley]

Does your market potential still look as promising as it did a few months back? (your plants do look superb).

[Worth1]

Looks great Cole.
Bastrop County sheriff said people better have their ducks in a row with all documentation if pulled over with this stuff or they are going to jail to be sorted out later.

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks, guys. The demand for feminized seeds was tremendous this past spring at $1 per seed. Most companies required several thousand seeds as a minimum order, and price breaks for quantity were minimal. Some farmers grow from rooted cuttings, which can sell for up to $4 apiece, and they are tiny, in 105 cell trays. That's $200 of plants in one square foot. Even worse, they often come infested with bugs, or carrying insect or mite damage.

One plant is capable of making thousands of seeds, so my little half acre has a lot of potential.

And yeah, Worth, the police are put in a difficult spot in that it takes a lab test to tell legal hemp from illegal cannabis. South Carolina just recently ordered all smokeable hemp to be removed from store shelves, at the request of their state police. I can say from the few other hemp farmers that I have met, it takes a little money and also some farmland in order to get started, and I think that does screen out people who might abuse the law.

[bower]

The plants look terrific, Cole! Really like your savvy grow plan too. Best kind of soil, no till and no weeding! Nice.

[pmcgrady]

Nice Job!

[Nematode]

New meaning to the word "cover crop".
Plenty on the up and up, but shadies growing too. Guessing mixed thc levels in some grows....not that I care one way or the other.
Plants look great, growing like weeds��