You have more experience than me so I’ll listen for sure. Out doors there are alot of different stressers though. poor water distribution is one of the main ones that I fight, hail is another one. I had a hail storm come through one year that killed one side of the plant and stripped 60-70% of the water leaves and topped every plant in the field. I noticed quite a few change pretty quickly after that it seemed like.
I havent had any change on me when I’m growing in doors but I hand pick those plants.
I’ve tried both and I perfer the fem seed I make. Input farming cost are the same with regular seed but the yield is about half after you pull the males plus labor becomes a factor in farming cost. Clones arent a bad option but they are just so expensive.
personally I feel good fem seed planted directly in the soil with a modified corn planter is the best. At harvest, swath it into windrows and let it field dry then come back with a combine.
What he said
Reg seeds for the win. Find your keeper pheno, clone of that 1 plant. Have 4 or 5 “mom” plants to hack away and take clones from. Tou can beat these plants up a bit before they call it quits and die.
I took a clone at week 6 in flower and reveg’d her. My week 7 test, resulted in the clone rooting, but finished flowering and was done.
1 Like
I wish I could do it that way I just dont have the space to propagate 80,000 clones or more.
1 Like
I hear ya. It’s a lot of work 100%.
Since you grow from seed, how do you know what each seed is going to produce in value of cbd or thc? Phenotypes vary hugely. This is the reason why selecting that perfect pheno is key to what outcome you want.
Example (I’ll even use fem seeds)
15 fem seeds. Your going to have 10-15 variations of the donor seed plant. Not 1 (well maybe 1)may be exactly the same pheno, BUT could always test different than the other. So now say you have a 18% cbd pheno, mixed with a 10% pheno cbd. Say you sent a mystery cola to get tested. It couldn’t the more potent cbd pheno, or it could be the lesser.
I always think outside the box more after medicating.
Lol
lol I try as well. When it comes to the scale that I grow at, which by no means am I at the scale that some are. I had to stop thinking in terms of individual plants and more along the lines of acres of plants and believe me I see some genetic diversity. For me it all boils down to input farming cost especially in this current market. The way the economics kind of works out for me is, It cost me under $500 in some cases to farm one acre. That’s producing my own seeds, running subterranean 30 year drip and already owning all the equipment. I’ll pull about 1000 -1500 pounds an acre that will homoginize at around 9% average. Lets say I’m selling biomass at .50 a point thats $4.50 a pound times on the lowend 1000 so $4500 per acre -$500 for cost gives me $4000 gross profit.
Now from clones last time I checked they were about $1 a clone or so.
I put in 2500 plants per acre which would be $2500 for the clones plus the $500 for farming puts me at $3000 per acre in cost. now the best I’ve seen so far once a total field is homogenized into one batch is 12% so ill base the numbers on that. at .50 cents a point thats $6 time 1000 pounds puts me at $6000 then backing out the labor of $3000 i"m at a gross profit of $3000
I make more using seed and the only reason is its cheaper for me to farm that way.
I think hemp does not have the variance that thc weed has in regard to phenos. My wife X t1 cross is growing in my field now. Four of every five plants look like t1 and the fifth looks like wife. In the t1 crop last year, I could find maybe three phenos in half an acre.
1 Like
@Autumn_Ridge_Hemp have you tried fiber yet?
I have not. I was at a hemp meeting with some guys from Indiana who grew fiber and they were happy to be making 500 bucks an acre. If you had a lot of marginal land and most of the equipment already, it’s at least better than corn and soybeans.
That was my thoughts too. I threw in 12 acres this year but didn’t have good luck. I tried to dry land farm it but we just didn’t get enough water.
What kind of corn planter are you using and what modifications did you make? I was looking at some vacuum precision seeders but they are expensive and probably unnecessary if something else can be made to work.
I second that direct sowing is the best option with what’s happening to prices, especially if you can produce your own seed and cut down cost there. I found that the higher planting population with direct really helps with weed control and labor
That’s the thing, you can get hermies from clones. Hemp is a dynamic plant with a huge will to live, which requires reproduction. Seed in this case… we have been making fem seed for years and You Always find a male here and there no matter what you do. We have not sold seed for the same reason.
Any John deere corn planter will work. You will have to modify the seed plates depending on the in row spacing you want but I would look on tractorhouse.com and pick up a 30" row spacing planter which is pretty common. If you need a wider row to row spacing you may have to modify the drive shafts and the mounting bar. You can Pick up a single row for cheap as well then you can set your row to row spacing by where you drive in the field.
“Feminized seeds” are created by combining pollen from a hermie, to a female. Usually this is done by stressing an entire room of females to the point of hermieing and letting the entire room self pollinate.
That being said your “feminized” seeds will always be either a female, or a hermie, never a full blooded male, because there was never the male chromosone present in the making of the seed.
Hermies sometimes start showing the signs of a female, leading people to believe the entire batch is all females, just to grow pollen sacks later. I have seen them grow in week 2 I have seen them grow in week 6.
I personally like regular seeds, pick out the males, and keep good solid full blooded females for moms.
I employ a slightly different method for pollinating a room but I do agree with passing along hermie traits and thats why we see some hermies in the field. as far as growing from regular seed i agree that if your running a couple thousand plants its a great way to do it. I do that for smokable hemp and my green house hemp but when it comes to biomass production I personally dont think its the right way to do it simply because the cost associate with growing from regular seed then cloning is just to high.
1 Like
I’m with you. I havent sold any seeds I produce, it just never was a business model I wanted to pursue because of the liability that comes with it. I have however given away a lot of seeds.
Us too, works out much better all around for us to give the seed away…
Fem seeds are made by using colloidal silver/STS, or the like while using MALE pollen dusted to a female bud.
The seeded buds are then tossed in the garbage after collecting the seeds.
I’ve got about 50-60 pounds of regular seed still sitting here, if you need any to mess around with i’ll give you some. Some is Boax/Otto and some is The Wife.
It is seed from biomass though so it could have been cross pollinated by god knows what.
1 Like