early Cherry Wine hemp flower
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First Flowers – Midsummer Hemp Report

It’s the last week of July and I’m just starting to see a few of the hemp plants beginning to flower–days are getting noticeably shorter now, about 14 1/2 hours today, enough to get the hemp started on the big transition from vegetative growth to flowering. A key milestone in the hemp growing season for…

freshly transplanted Cherry Wine hemp plant
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Summer Solstice Hemp Report

Most of the hemp seedlings have been transplanted from their nursery pots into their final homes in the ground. With summer solstice coming up this week, everything is right on schedule. The young plants were just starting to outgrow their pots so they’re very happy to be in the earth now where their roots can…

hemp plant in vegetative phase
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Hemp’s Vegetative Phase

It’s mid-July here in Maine, the last of the hemp seedlings were transplanted in June, and now the quick-growing plants really start to bulk up. Known as the “vegetative phase,” this is when these hardy annuals produce abundant foliage and branches prior to the “flowering phase” triggered by the longer nights. In Maine that usually…

raindrops on hemp plant
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Rain!

After weeks and weeks of drought we finally got a soaking rain–what a relief! It was only 1 -1/2″ but that’s a lot more than we’ve had in a long time. The plants were very happy. I’ve been irrigating during the drought but there’s no substitute for a nice steady rainfall. The brook is no…

brook
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Irrigating Hemp

Hardy as hemp is, these resilient plants still require a regular supply of water to stay strong and healthy. Ideally Mother Nature takes care of this need by delivering a good soaking rain every week or so but as any farmer knows that’s never a given. Here in Maine right now things are definitely getting…