Industrial Hemp in Oregon - Page 12 - Hemp - International Cannagraphic Magazine Forums

socioecologist · 04-14-2017, 04:23 PM

Our hemp bills are scheduled for public hearing and work session, but probably won't be voted on in committee until next week.

Had a nice profile story done on us by "Stoner Magazine" a couple weeks ago. Link here. Super nice people, awesome to have them out to the farm.

Planting time is just a couple weeks away and I can say with some certainty that Oregon will be growing an awful lot of CBD rich plants this year! We also found out that another large seed provider in state has been selling "feminized seed" to farmers that is actually male / female...not looking forward to the pollen fallout associated with that one.

So far the market has stayed pretty strong for flower sales across the country, and large international markets are being established as well.

We're busy little bees right now, prepping for a final seed harvest on some new experimental crosses, then we'll start filling greenhouses with seedlings and prepping our field for June 1 planting.

PDX Dopesmoker · 04-14-2017, 10:45 PM

socioecologist, what kind of gear do the pro hemp growers use to separate out all that seed? I know you've got to have something better than giant album covers to be separating out seed in the volume you're doing.
Thanks as always for keeping us updated on the hemp industry, is a fascinating and often overlooked segment of the cannabis world.

akmanak · 04-16-2017, 04:57 AM

Just started the process of growing hemp.

Have someone who will supply the seeds and I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants

socioecologist · 04-16-2017, 06:38 AM

Seed separation...man, that needs a whole separate thread, been a very steep learning curve, that's for sure! I had no experience with large-scale seed sorting equipment before getting into adventure. My brother (Eric) was the brains behind that, and he pretty much MacGuyver'd it at first. We're getting more sophisticated now. The one steady refrain through it all is that seeds have to be separated from flower material one way or another; there are high yield / low damage approaches (rubbing buds in your hands to break seeds free) and average yield / high damage approaches (combines)--there are trade-offs with every decision.

He started with 30 gallon sterilite tote lids, using them like a big album cover, allowing the seeds to roll through the masticated flowers and collect on the lip below. Next he dropped the flower / seed mix in front of a box fan (it sat on a standard folding table) with 3 30 gallon sterilite containers positioned directly in front of the fan one after another (narrow edge towards fan), but below and on the ground. As he would drop the material in front of the fan, viable seeds would fall into the first bin, nonviable seed, stems, flower into the 2nd and 3rd bins. Scared me to death when I saw him do it for the first time. I would clean up the material from the first bin with a bird seed cleaner we got off Amazon for a couple hundred bucks.

We graduated to a bigger version (6' tall or so) of the design on this website:

https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html

Eric and Chris, employee #1, took the design and scaled it up to be about 6' tall. Works great, Eric is like a level 65 wizard using that thing on our small seed lots. He was using it last week to further clean some of our "early" series seed lots.

For test plots in the field (like our auto lines), we use standard small-batch ag seed cleaning equipment (air, vibration, 4 screens, and gravity table for post-process sorting) that can handle about 500 pounds of finished seed sorting per hour. We basically just buy a day of access to the cleaner from the ag company we lease from and can crank out a whole year's worth of work on larger field projects in a day.

The newest facility we are leasing has a much larger cleaner in it--time permitting, I'll post some pictures next week of that puppy. It would really only be useful for grain seed destined for replanting to supply food markets. Lots of respect for grain when grown in the right place, but we're not headed in that direction right now.

socioecologist · 04-16-2017, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akmanak

Just started the process of growing hemp.

Have someone who will supply the seeds and I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants

Take a look here for some baseline information on soil type, it's a really cool tool (I use the .kml in Google Earth):

https://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/soilweb-apps/

We get about a ton per acre with 1815 plants (4'x6' spacing), but that's on really good farmland and what we consider to be good genetics. What are you working with that guarantees nothing over 4' tall? One thing I would caution though: if you can't afford to fail, farming is probably the wrong venture--we mess up way more than we succeed.

PDX Dopesmoker · 04-16-2017, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Seed separation...man, that needs a whole separate thread

It certainly does, this is the thread: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=324366
I copied your reply into that thread. Hopefully some of the domestic high THC growers will working in your volume someday and need that info.

kelly1376 · 04-16-2017, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akmanak

I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants

Definitely get a soil test. You can work with whatever you have via amendments. I'd spend the 25 bucks and send logan labs a sample. For an extra 25 they'll give you a list of amendments to add based on the results of your test.

socioecologist · 05-17-2017, 04:39 AM

Been a month, hope all is well for those of you who have been so kind as to follow this little adventure. Spring still hasn't arrived where we are, and it's just about planting time. Summer (a rumor at this point) is predicted to be colder, wetter, and shorter than normal, with equal chances of either a (1) mild fall or (2) another rain-apocalypse like last year. We're stoked to be running autos and very early flowering plants so we can get through the harvest in time to plant our cover crops for the following season. It looks to be a challenging year for those who don't have their harvest date predictably dialed in when planting.

The Oregon hemp scene is blowing up this year; we sold out of seed for the 2nd consecutive season and we're hoping to help those left out by providing starts from our leftover field seed. We have 2.5 20'x100' greenhouses fully planted (~150k starts) right now and are putting more out every day.

How would you all recommend drying 120k pounds of flowers? Anyone else have this problem? Ha ha

.

View image in gallery

Bradley_Danks · 05-17-2017, 04:45 AM

Wow, how do you keep all those starts watered properly?

That's an ass ton of flower to dry. Is that wet weight? I can't wait to see how your crops do this year! Good luck

Robrites · 05-17-2017, 04:46 AM

Jesus. Just Jesus.

04-14-2017, 04:23 PM	#111
socioecologist Member Join Date: Jul 2014 Location: Oregon Posts: 299	Our hemp bills are scheduled for public hearing and work session, but probably won't be voted on in committee until next week. Had a nice profile story done on us by "Stoner Magazine" a couple weeks ago. Link here. Super nice people, awesome to have them out to the farm. Planting time is just a couple weeks away and I can say with some certainty that Oregon will be growing an awful lot of CBD rich plants this year! We also found out that another large seed provider in state has been selling "feminized seed" to farmers that is actually male / female...not looking forward to the pollen fallout associated with that one. So far the market has stayed pretty strong for flower sales across the country, and large international markets are being established as well. We're busy little bees right now, prepping for a final seed harvest on some new experimental crosses, then we'll start filling greenhouses with seedlings and prepping our field for June 1 planting.
	Quote 4 members found this post helpful.

04-14-2017, 10:45 PM	#112
PDX Dopesmoker Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2016 Location: In Portland, next to the pipe Posts: 1,283	socioecologist, what kind of gear do the pro hemp growers use to separate out all that seed? I know you've got to have something better than giant album covers to be separating out seed in the volume you're doing. Thanks as always for keeping us updated on the hemp industry, is a fascinating and often overlooked segment of the cannabis world.
	Quote 1 members found this post helpful.

04-16-2017, 04:57 AM	#113
akmanak Newbie Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 2	Just started the process of growing hemp. Have someone who will supply the seeds and I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all. Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows? The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get? The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants
	Quote 1 members found this post helpful.

04-16-2017, 06:38 AM	#114
socioecologist Member Join Date: Jul 2014 Location: Oregon Posts: 299	Seed separation...man, that needs a whole separate thread, been a very steep learning curve, that's for sure! I had no experience with large-scale seed sorting equipment before getting into adventure. My brother (Eric) was the brains behind that, and he pretty much MacGuyver'd it at first. We're getting more sophisticated now. The one steady refrain through it all is that seeds have to be separated from flower material one way or another; there are high yield / low damage approaches (rubbing buds in your hands to break seeds free) and average yield / high damage approaches (combines)--there are trade-offs with every decision. He started with 30 gallon sterilite tote lids, using them like a big album cover, allowing the seeds to roll through the masticated flowers and collect on the lip below. Next he dropped the flower / seed mix in front of a box fan (it sat on a standard folding table) with 3 30 gallon sterilite containers positioned directly in front of the fan one after another (narrow edge towards fan), but below and on the ground. As he would drop the material in front of the fan, viable seeds would fall into the first bin, nonviable seed, stems, flower into the 2nd and 3rd bins. Scared me to death when I saw him do it for the first time. I would clean up the material from the first bin with a bird seed cleaner we got off Amazon for a couple hundred bucks. We graduated to a bigger version (6' tall or so) of the design on this website: https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html Eric and Chris, employee #1, took the design and scaled it up to be about 6' tall. Works great, Eric is like a level 65 wizard using that thing on our small seed lots. He was using it last week to further clean some of our "early" series seed lots. For test plots in the field (like our auto lines), we use standard small-batch ag seed cleaning equipment (air, vibration, 4 screens, and gravity table for post-process sorting) that can handle about 500 pounds of finished seed sorting per hour. We basically just buy a day of access to the cleaner from the ag company we lease from and can crank out a whole year's worth of work on larger field projects in a day. The newest facility we are leasing has a much larger cleaner in it--time permitting, I'll post some pictures next week of that puppy. It would really only be useful for grain seed destined for replanting to supply food markets. Lots of respect for grain when grown in the right place, but we're not headed in that direction right now.
	Quote 2 members found this post helpful.

05-17-2017, 04:39 AM	#118
socioecologist Member Join Date: Jul 2014 Location: Oregon Posts: 299	Been a month, hope all is well for those of you who have been so kind as to follow this little adventure. Spring still hasn't arrived where we are, and it's just about planting time. Summer (a rumor at this point) is predicted to be colder, wetter, and shorter than normal, with equal chances of either a (1) mild fall or (2) another rain-apocalypse like last year. We're stoked to be running autos and very early flowering plants so we can get through the harvest in time to plant our cover crops for the following season. It looks to be a challenging year for those who don't have their harvest date predictably dialed in when planting. The Oregon hemp scene is blowing up this year; we sold out of seed for the 2nd consecutive season and we're hoping to help those left out by providing starts from our leftover field seed. We have 2.5 20'x100' greenhouses fully planted (~150k starts) right now and are putting more out every day. How would you all recommend drying 120k pounds of flowers? Anyone else have this problem? Ha ha . View image in gallery
	Quote 4 members found this post helpful.

05-17-2017, 04:45 AM	#119
Bradley_Danks Puffing Herbs Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Willamette Posts: 1,175	Wow, how do you keep all those starts watered properly? That's an ass ton of flower to dry. Is that wet weight? I can't wait to see how your crops do this year! Good luck __________________ bdanks.com Jagerschnitzel
	Quote 1 members found this post helpful.

05-17-2017, 04:46 AM	#120
Robrites Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Orygun Posts: 3,218	Jesus. Just Jesus. __________________ Legal Weed is the fastest growing industry in the United States.
	Quote 1 members found this post helpful.