Midway through the 2019 season and wanted to get an update in, again, for my sake as well as anyone else that may have an interest.

So I haven’t counted, but I probably am looking at around 220 plants or so. I wanted to plant 250 but a bunch my Cherry Bounce didn’t germinate(around 10%), then another 10% came out deformed. I bought a tray of 50 Suver Haze from Howard Prussack and planted probably a couple dozen BaOx from a tray of 72 I bought off VT Hemp Nursery. The BaOx I sexed myself so I hope I did a good job…so far they look like females.

Here’s what the field looked like the other day.

Fertilization-

To this point, I’ve fertilized twice with Neptune’s Harvest Seaweed Fertilizer and twice with Soil Balance. I’ll feed four more times, roughly 2 weeks apart. This Soil Balance product is a microbe tea concentrate, OMRI listed so approved for organic farming. Supposedly this contains microbes specific to hemp plants, designed to help the plant absorb and process nutrients more efficiently leading to higher CBD oil yield. It was recommended that I feed 3 times during the season. Price was around $150. I bought twice as much and will feed 6 times. Completed second feeding on Saturday. Mixing 16 1/4 teaspoons/4 teaaspoons(16 grams) with about 4 gallons of water, taking about 30 minutes+ to drain it. To create enough draw, I have to keep the greenhouse drip on, as well as the hemp, so I’m fertilizing my greenhouse plants, too. So maybe the hemp IS getting the 3 feedings, if one were to assume the feeding is split between the two systems. Here’s what my irrigation/fertigation system looks like.

Pruning

Started pruning last week. Not sure if I’m doing it right on a few levels.

ONE, what to prune? Basically, I’m drawing on what little knowledge I have of pruning tomatoes and blueberries, taking out inner growth growing towards the middle and some of the fan leaves in the middle(these will die off anyway). I’ve searched online for info/videos/tutorials on pruning hemp grown outdoors…I haven’t found anything, yet. Only thing that seems to be out there is pruning indoor grow rooms.

Something I did pick up which made sense was that indoor grow rooms need to be pruned more because the light is only coming from above. Outdoors, the sun is hitting all parts of the plant, so the foliage in different parts of the plant is being used to capture that precious sunlight. I used this tidbit to get me to temper my pruning efforts so as not to remove too much. Someone threw out 10 percent. I’m probably getting around 15. I actually set my timer on my phone for 5 minutes at first, then worked down to 3, to give myself a time limit for a couple reasons. One, to measure the efficiency of the job for the future. Two, to make sure I don’t sit there for an hour and take off too much. All in all, most plants at this point were able to be thinned out in 3-5 minutes pretty easily. Here’s a picture of one that I HOPE comes out alright.

TWO-When to prune? Supposedly according to some sources, up to two weeks into flowering. When exactly is the plant flowering? I thought this was pretty vague until the other day when I was pruning and came across a plant that was pretty obviously flowering, but still, if you can just see a few hairs, is it flowering? Then…is every variety different? The folks who claim to know will tell you that. I think I’m on safe ground. Not sure if I’ll prune any more. Looking at the plants in the greenhouse, I see a bunch of inner growth that I’d like to get out of there.

Here’s my theory-seemed like last year, that inner growth made processing(removing leaves, cleaning flowers) take a bunch longer. I’m hoping that by removing the smaller inner branches and potential spots for “popcorn” buds, I’ll end up with bigger flowers on the ends of the branches which will take less time to process.