Early American hemp at large production rates was grown mostly with enslaved labor.
Ny is kinda interesting with how things unfolded. Under Cuomo the rec market was going to be handed to the mso companies running the medical, with no homegrow. Once he resigned the new draft came in giving small farms a chance.
Ny also has watched other states and learned 
. Our electric grid can’t handle big hid grow op opening up. Maine is a good example for taxing the electrical grid.
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Also there are a handful of antiquated hemp husbandry books that detail work with cannabis in the 19’th and 20’th centuries. Hemp Cannabis Sativa by Boyce for example.
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I think I saw one of the “Legacy” growers show basically their own little substation, to run their grow.
Yeah, but I don’t like the idea that their only contribution was being slave labor. Id rather learn what the slaves knew and what they did. They brought a lot knowledge and skills with them when they were forced here. Learning from their techniques I think would be a great way of remembering their oft forgotten contributions. A
lot of american culture and food is heavily influenced by slavery.
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The growers show cases was a stop gap because of slow dispensary openings. They are ending at the end of this month.
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Many of these enslaved people were native Americans. They were already here.
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Maybe I should better ask. What is the reason for such focus on production? How much is needed?
Nice! Good time to be in NY. I’m glad they are giving small farms a chance. The microbusiness licensees in MI are my favorite places to visit and buy from. Small business, family owned, works with the community. Checks all my boxes.
Those are the people I’m looking to help. I know high density plantings don’t seem like they will, but trust that I am cooking on something larger
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Then they already had their own techniques for not necessarily growing cannabis but for managing the land in a way that doesn’t deplete it of resources and protects it. Lot of really good info from Native Americans that we’ve adapted into ag systems already.
There is a text book that is really good and more like a collection of essays called Sacred Ecology that explores the relationship between indigenous people, their land, and their agriculture that is incredible. If you can find it used for a good price, its a wonderful resource
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So my focus here is pretty narrow but it fits into a broader idea. Ultimately, the big picture is farms that no longer rely on outside resources. Making a closed loop system, almost, we still harvest crops, but much of the biomass gets returned to the soil. By doing this you return resources to the soil and additional benefits. They get broken down, microbes happen, water, more plants, harvest, return unused biomass to soil, repeat.
There is much more to it than what I’ve described, and it can take a farm as many as 4 or 5 years to see benefits, but when they come they come fast. Big change though, starts with a little step.
And what cannabis grower doesn’t want to talk about how good their stash is? Seemed like the perfect conversation starter!
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Yeah, I have those books and there is a bunch of information from European countries on hemp production. But the environmental response is really strong in Cannabis. We see it in hemp all the time because they regularly test. North America has its own climate patterns, soil types, pests, and disease and we are learning those consistently effect how different strains grow.
I want to know what they did so that we can test, adapt, and utilize techniques that are both modern and specific to NA.
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Hello @ThePotanist
I learned and studied agroecology and biodynamics on an experimental station for diversified organic market gardening and field crops for 2 years and 10 years of practice on the cultivation of spice, aromatic, medicinal and perfume plants.
From what I was able to learn about high density sowing is that it can be advantageous for limiting the emergence of competing weeds, limiting soil erosion and optimum mineralization while preserving soil life.
but if you sow too densely you can also cause the arrival of pests and cryptogamic diseases.
From my tests carried out on the high density of sowing with hemp cultivated for seeds and fiber, the damping off of part of the seedlings is almost inevitable and to the extent that the culture develops as best it can, the phytium and botrytis would take over and would have disastrous consequences on the crop unless there were optimal soil and climatic conditions.
on this system of cultural management
relatively low or even non-existent relative humidity and adapted variety of population could be an advantage.
edit: for my part and always from my experience quantity and quality do not go well together it is a kind of pleonasm or nonsense…
in byodynamic cultivation or on living soil we prefer farms on a human scale which means 1 hectare for 1 human work unit
Just my humble thought
Peace out
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they grew hemp, not cannabis. that’s what they did so it doesn’t really apply to us except for the soil management, but you should be able to find records of what they did for that. i’ve seen a plantation’s supply list and records of crop management before, not sure where as it’s been almost three years when the wife was researching ancestry. i thought i recalled seeing a record of washington’s plantation decades ago too.
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Hey @Ras-T great input and glad you joined the discussion, you’ve got some great experience.
Cannabis is already being planted in high densities with success. It’s not cannabinoid hemp, but fiber hemp seed ratings can go as high as 400 plants/m2. France recommends plantings of a minimum of 150 plants/m2.
High density plantings combined with thoughtful and purposeful cover cropping and rotations are typically sufficient to keep soil disease pressure down. In fact, the high density cannabis planting helps to condition the soil and culture microbes that can help make the soil disease suppressive.
Do you mind if I ask what country the research station you worked at is in? I have done a lot of work and built relationships with people at a few similar places. The Rodale Institute has been a collaborator in the past!
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Hemp is cannabis. I know there are difference in intended use and how selection and breeding has shaped parts of the genome, but they are the same plant grown for different reason.
I’ll have to look into some of those plantation books. That would certainly be interesting to see what they’ve got recorded. Most of what I had been able in the past was related to tobacco production. Thanka for the info!
when i say they grew hemp, i mean they didn’t grow it to smoke, they grew it for fiber. no way to transpose the two. you can’t really use it both ways, at least not yet. if i grew any hemp that tested over 0.3% thc i couldn’t use it for paper, even though i wasn’t going to smoke or extract any of it. maybe, just maybe, if and when they make it federally legal then you’ll be onto something, but until then it doesn’t go both ways. i’ll tell you what really pisses me off about the “medical” in wv is the way there are no higher cbd, cbg, or thcv containing strains, only extracts. i had a 50mg thc gummy yesterday that i couldn’t even feel the effects from. it’s sad really and why i plan on crossing the strains i am. i may not be able to sell it to the medical stores but i can damned sure sell the seeds, even though i plan on giving most of them away.
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I dont like the wait until its legal argument because that sets the whole community back i think. We can do research right now on plants that are identical save an enzyme and learn an incredible amount of information that goes to sustainability. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I will stand by it, most of the hemp research can apply directly to rec and med growers one way or another.
And I would like to make clear a lot of what we are saying in here is speculation until the work gets done.
Edit to add: I feel like people tend to forget that Cannabis is a plant because we have such an interesting and amazing mythos built around it, at least in NA. Being a plant also means it is bound by the laws of nature and that leads to the conclusion that our abundance of research into plant sciences is applicable in some way. Some details will change and be different but at the end of the day it’s a plant
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Its in France Brittany 47° lat Oceanic climate
Nice!!
Are you still in Europe? You guys had a pretty good head start on us with cultivation and I’ve read many research articles from that part of the world
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