Sample Schedule for Planting Hemp Fields

One of the questions we get a lot regarding planting hemp fields is “What should I plant?”

Should I plant any CBD? How about CBG? How can I be sure it won’t go hot?

We decided to share with you how we plan to approach our field trials this year, in hopes that it answers some of your questions and gives you ideas for your own crop.

A Few Caveats Before We Begin

1. No matter what you grow, you must be prepared to test weekly as your buds start to form. If you’re not planning on testing, what follows is bad advice.
2. Our flower times are based on NC sun. Depending on where you live, you could see flower earlier or later.
3. While THC is mainly governed by genetics, growing conditions are also a factor. If you grow a stressed plant (drought, low feed, compact soil, etc.) you’re going to see faster THC development. It is of utmost importance to test every strain every week.
4. Know your state’s laws and testing protocols, because they are wide and varied. For most states, you’ll need to harvest within 15 days of your compliancy test, and how to go about getting that test is dependent on the state. TN is still Delta9 this year, and NC has a generous harvest window, so what we share will be bad advice if you live in those states. (We’ll make some suggestions for these cases below.)
5. We’re analyzing just based on biomass, so if you’re growing for smokable flower, you should look at terpene profiles instead.

Planting Window

We’re planning to plant our field trial in mid-June. We talked to a lot of people last year who planted early, and while the light is sufficient in late May/early June, the plants grew too large and couldn’t sustain their own weight by the end of the season. There’s still plenty of time for those plants to develop, even planting hemp fields late June/early July, so we decided for somewhere in the middle. If you’re in the deep south, you may want to even plant a little later than that.

We’re going to use a field map that plants the latest harvest window in the middle rows of the field with the earliest harvest window at the edges, working incrementally out. Think through how you will harvest your field. Make the earliest plants easy to access and work your way through the crop as the hemp matures.

Hemp Strains to Plant

Either in the middle rows of the field or at one end, we’ll be planting CBG Gold. It has the longest field time and should be compliant until week 8 of flower, so it won’t need to be harvested until late September/early October.

Next to CBG Gold will be Super CBD, which is a moderate CBD producer, but because it’s a slow THC producer, it can grow longer into the season so it will have bigger buds. Being a true sativa, it will also be taller and have more fiber for processing if you are so inclined. We expect compliance testing around week 5-6 with a harvest in late September.

Next will be Stout, which is a CBD variety with the slowest THC development in our lineup. Even though our indoor tests of Stout were disturbed by light, we’re confident that it will stay complaint through week 4 or 5, maybe a touch longer. (We’ll begin testing as soon as flower starts to develop, which we anticipate will be around the first or second week of August.) If we get compliance testing around week 4, that would put our harvest window in mid-September.

In our original plan, we were going to plant Wife next. However, it would end up coming off the same time as Stout, but with smaller buds. It might still make sense for genetic diversity.

Wife builds up THC on pace with BaOx (see below), but it tends to flower a week or two slower, placing the harvest window for Wife around mid-September. It will need a compliance test around week 3 or 4 of flower.

On the outer edge of the field we’ll plant BaOx. It produces cannabinoids quickly–including THC–and typically flowers two weeks sooner than Wife. It would need a compliancy test around week 3 with an expected harvest window of early to mid-September.

Planting Hemp Fields: In Short

Robert Burns once said in a poem,

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley, (go oft awry)
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!

Robert Burns, from “To a Mouse”

When planting hemp fields, the best we can do is look forward and guess and plan to the best of our abilities. We have no idea what the weather will be like. We don’t know if the testing labs will process our results efficiently. But that’s the life of a farmer. As Burns later said in that same poem, “An’ forward tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear!”

If we achieve success, we’ll build upon it; and if we fail, it’ll be a learning experience. With that in mind, our expectation for this sample grow might look something like this: