Here is a post started last fall and never published. I’m going to combine it with this year’s hemp drying experience so it’s all in one spot. Here goes.
2019 POST:
Well. What are we learning this year? Lots.
Started harvesting on 9/20, focusing on Suver Haze(one of the 3 varieties I grew this year….genetics…that’s a whole other topic!). Sun-leafed(took off bigger fan/sun leafs) in the field, cut individual branches, then brought into greenhouse to be pre-trimmed, then hung in the barn. After two weeks, it’s almost ready, but not quite. The past week has been pretty cool/cold and rainy/cloudy. Very humid. Read over 50% humidity and you’re just rehydrating the product. Keeping me up at night…will it dry? Will it mold?
Reached out to a well-respected local farm to inquire about their hemp drying method. Turns out they turned one or two of their greenhouses into drying rooms. Covered with 6mil black plastic, temperature at 65F, with the fan set to come on at 75F. Has a few 70-pint dehumidifiers running. Hemp looked great. Drying beautifully.
So I spent the last few days prepping my greenhouse for the same. This required quite a bit of work, but work that would have had to be done, anyways, so it really just kicked us into high gear. I was very lucky to have some great friends and neighbors(and my teenage daughter for a couple hours) come by to help out.
2020 POST:
So how did it turn out last year? Great! After a couple weeks in the barn(pictures above), I moved everything into the greenhouse. You’ll see below hemp hung at the far end of the house, a commercial dehumidifier in the middle(white R2 looking unit), a drying rack on the right for what I hoped to be smokeable CBD flower(didn’t work out…didn’t pass the mold test, so had it processed and used for tinctures and salves…the processing got rid of the mold), and a bucking station on the left(sawhorses with blue bin in middle of them). Notice the floor is all plastic. This is to keep the moisture in the ground and not in the greenhouse.
You’ll also see the picture of the black plastic over the whole greenhouse. TIP: if you go this route…don’t deflate the 2 layers of greenhouse plastic, then put the black plastic on. This will make sure you don’t have it on too tight. It ended up ripping horizontally on both sides….couldn’t take the tension, I guess. It’s regular black plastic, not greenhouse plastic. Lesson learned!
Last year I grew approximately 250 plants….WAY too much. One, I didn’t have a buyer for any of it. Not a huge deal. I had a use for some of it with my own products, but definitely not all. I ended up using the 50 Suver Haze plants for processing into extract for my own products. I ended up with 36 lbs of beautiful dried flower from these plants…very happy!
The other 200 plants were a mix…some produced well, others didn’t. the varieties were BaOx and Cherry Bounce(most were this variety). What I found was that these varieties required more labor to get to the final dried flower product. They grew a lot more branches with less flower than the Suver Haze, which in the end, required more labor to de-leaf, transport, hang, and then buck. These varieties also ended up at about 8% CBD, whereas the Suver Haze came in around 13%. This isn’t to say these varieties won’t produce magnificently for others…they just didn’t for me. I heard that they did well for others. For my money, I’m looking for plants like the Suver Haze…fewer branches producing bigger flowers at a higher percentage. I still have about 90 lbs of the BaOx and Cherry Bounce if you’re interested….
This year, the goal was to grow a smaller number of plants and smother them with love and attention….quality not quantity. Well, that wasn’t exactly how it went down. I planted 55 Lifter plants(another variety from Oregon CBD, same company that produces the Suver Haze). I ended up with about half of last year’s yield…17 lbs dried flower. Honestly, I didn’t test the soil in the spring to determine fertility and pH(big factor in dictating nutrient uptake). I planted each plant in a whole with a shovel of compost and a cup of North Country Organic’s Pro-Gro. Obviously, this wasn’t enough. Last year, I fertilized frequently with Neptune’s fish and seaweed fertilizer. This year, maybe once. Not enough attention. Yes, they’re weeds, but if you really want them to produce, like any plant, it helps to pay attention. I really didn’t. Lesson learned….again!
The bright side was that harvest didn’t take nearly as long(15 man hours). Much less stressful. I wasn’t concerned with smokeable flower, so we didn’t trim before hanging like last year, also saving time. So I ended up with less flower, all vacuum sealed ready to be used for whatever I need in the next year or so. This initially tested at 7.5% on 9/11…so that flower was harvested approximately a 10-12 days before that. I’m hoping that by the time we harvested over two weeks later, the CBD content went up significantly. We’ll see. Out for testing as I write this. Here’s a pic from harvest day on September 19th. These plants are half the size they were last year.
This year, we cut the stems in the field, put in plastic totes, and hung in the barn….pretty similar to last year, except last year we ended up hanging whole plants by the end, mostly because we ran out of time to go through the whole de-leaf/cut stem process…this process takes A LOT of work!
Weather was perfect drying weather for a week and stems were starting to get crackly(when they crack and break they’re done!). After a week, cool damp weather was forecast, so I set up a small section of my greenhouse for drying this time. I put a much smaller piece of plastic over the middle of the greenhouse, and used only this area for drying. I put plastic down the middle of the greenhouse, since I had plants still growing on the other end, and trying to dehumidify with bare soil exposed is pointless and a waste of energy. I basically tried to create the front half of the greenhouse as my drying chamber. During sunny days, I opened the sides and had the exhaust fan come on at 75 degrees. At night, I closed everything up and kept the heat at 65 with the dehumidifier on. Within a week, everything was dry.
Didn’t take too long to buck it up using my custom design Mother Bucker…
Overall…more learning experiences which is good, a decent little harvest which will turn into something(Root 7-9 CBD product or sold to…someone).
An interesting note: I sold CBD starts to Montpelier Agway and some others through private sale, and the word I got back was that these plants THRIVED for other folks….huge!! So it was definitely me. Not the plant. Oh well. Looking forward to next year. Stay safe and be well! Love each other, kids. The world needs it.
