Here’s where we are so far! These plots will be used in both my intro to agriculture and agroecology classes this fall. We have full till plots and no till plots, both with and without cover (incorporated in the tilled plots). Why bother with this if its not cannabis? Because relying on one crop to drive your income places undo stress on growers! Diversify your plantings and you can ensure economic stability.
Each year we will be adding a new set of plots. They will all begin at the same entry point (summer soybeans following a winter annual such as wheat) and will all be managed differently. This will allow for direct comparisons between systems in a given year and will allow us to evaluate the time component as well. A lot of conservation techniques won’t have obvious benefits for a few years, but when they come, they come hard.
We have 5 ft alleys between the crops which next year will be planted with cannabis, illustrating to growers and Gardners the benefits and pitfalls of this strategy. I am expecting the no till and cover crop plots to be especially good at hosting beneficial insects with the lack of disturbance and increased habitat. The fun one will be seeing how disease pressure reacts.
Going to be at Cannapalooza this Saturday at The Lake of the Ozarks if any fellow midwest heads are free! I’ll be meeting, chatting, and trying to recruit grower-participants for on farm or greenhouse research. You can also stop by seminar at 3 on Saturday to see me upset a bunch of people as I advocate for sustainable changes in the cannabis industry! Should be fun and hopefully some great conversation!
I’ll try and keep this updated as soil tests, weed densities, and pest and disease pressure data is collected. I know it doesn’t look like a cannabis grow yet, but give me some time! This should be a fun journey!!
So this soil looks better than most in the area. We were historically prairie so high organic matter really helped give the clay soil structure, but most people here row crop and till before planting and after harvest so most of the OM has been lost and its just sticky, poorly draining, clay goop. Or people overgraze and end up with really compact soil. I am truly lucky that our farm manager believes in soil health, so he has done a great job of improving the soil on the farm, but hes also fighting 150+ years of abused pasture. It would’ve been a clay loam at one point, but poor management results in most just being goopy mud. Im hoping that including some native prairie rye will go a long way towards restoring OM and improving drainage so we can get this soil back to what it once was.
Dang, I’d love to attend something like that!
Just food for thought, but I’ve recently started a project for myself, well because I cheap pucker, as the cost of one of my favorite additives for my indoor grows, (the only way here in Pennslytucky to grow bud) is Coco Husks.
They were very cheap when I started using them 10-12 years ago.
I love them as they last a long time, multiple uses, and then the go into our outdoor garden.
They do travel some 6-7 thousand miles to get here to Appalachia.
But what to use?
Then I remember, sometime in the 80’s, I got a gag gift, of a packet of Luffa seeds, as Loofa sponges were all the latest health craze as folks use them to exfoliate their skin.
H’mm wet/dry cycles, many of them.
No molding, tough as hell…sounds like a good candidate to try as planting medium!
Grown out ones are NOT cost effective, at all.
However a $5.00 packet of seed, some pots, some spent medium as a base to grow them out, and 110-120 days.
If I get a crop off, as my seedlings are growing now, the set up is made out back for them, a salvaged tent frame and floor, 6- 10 gallon pots, and each pot will have 4-5 plants.
I have garden wire for on top the frame, as the ones in the 80’s went all over my backyard, and that sucked.
IF, they work as I hope, that will make me happy. It is not a huge cost for me, but in this economic nightmare, save where ever you can.
Sorry to hijack your thread, I just found it very interesting, and close to my project., and I hope it’s food for thought.
Random ask, can you recommend one or more plant genetics textbooks? I need to understand how plant genes are inherited and interact better, for my cannabis breeding. Was having fun with some other plants too.
My botany 101 basics were a long time ago though. I figure if anyone could suggest a “plant genetics 201” that’s going to be reasonably relevant to cannabis it would be you. Not looking for a cannabis breeding manual, but better foundational knowledge of plant genetics in general.
Dang man, this is kind of cool, think I’ll do the 45 minute drive down and catch your talk. Even though I’m very limited to my indoor grow space this kind of info is fascinating to me.
So a standard genetics class textbook will be a good introduction, but for plant breeding the most value will come from learning the theory (not necessarily the math) of quantitative genetics. I have seen some, but not many quant gen articles on Cannabis and it would go a LONG WAY to helping breeders. This is how professional plant breeders go about evaluations, and knowing what they are doing and more importantly why is super important. Plus all the big canna businesses are doing this to pinpoint terpenes for breeding using either quantitative trait loci or genome wide association studies. Will you be able to do that? If you can afford sequencing, sure. If you can’t is it a waste? Not at all. Its the next extension most grad students go to after mendel.
I can’t emphasize enough how much going beyond mendel is crucial. Quant gen is not the easiest to learn and can be frustrating at the beginning, but once you begin to understand the concepts and see them around you. There is an intro textbook by Falconer and Mackay that I like and is widely considered one of the best texts available.
I would also add that you shouldn’t just stop with quantitative genetics. Evolution and evolutionary genetics are the next step after quant gen. This will you give a much better understanding the long term effects of breeding choices, directional selection, mutation, and drift. They compliment each other extremely well.
Awesome! I started indoor and still love indoor! I’ve got some ideas for growers indoors but they will certainly spark some unhappy faces but I also try to offer potential solutions!
Thanks! I’ll be back once I’ve soaked up some info.
I agree with you, Mendel was really awesome, but inheritance and expression of many traits is way more complex. I’ve read just enough to realize how much fun there is to be had in exploring it.
Reading about corn genetics and crossing some varieties a few years ago was delightful, mostly because there’s been so much research done and made publicly available about corn.
Edit to add, unless I win the lottery there is no sequencing in my future. But I’ll happily draw detailed diagrams and grow out lots of plants.
That ticket can come sooner than later!! With schedule 3 on the horizon, research grants can cover the cost.
This is a long term goal of mine! I would love to start sequencing varietals, especially older genetics. If its a grant from a government agency it would make all the results public so everyone has the information. But real talk, the cannabis genome is insane from years of clandestine breeding and inbreeding.
FYI, I read an interesting article not too long ago that compared male/female bred plants to a selfed plant from the same line and found very little inbreeding. The selfed plant, statistically, had the same genetic diversity as the outcross F1. So, grow them bag seeds yall!!
It is and I’m surprised its not bigger news in the community. Really stops the talk about not wanting to use selfed or bag seed genetics because they are more inbred. This admittedly was just one generation test and selfed seeds likely need to be followed longer before we get the full picture, but it would change my mind as a grower or breeder on thinking those seeds were subpar in the near term.
I figure if anyone could suggest a “plant genetics 201” that’s going to be reasonably relevant to cannabis it would be you. Not looking for a cannabis breeding manual, but better foundational knowledge of plant genetics in general.
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