I had been writing in previous installments about the exceptional weather we have been getting, spoke too soon. The previous night we had a frost warning (!), and while I do not think that our field had been touched by it, the plants seemed to me to be very unhappy, and almost wrinkly- like.
None of that really shows in the photos, so must have been in my head.
I brought out-of-town special guests with me this time: Louise Hollingsworth of the Ontario Hemp Alliance, with her children Sam and Elsie, and Kerry N -Garret, a researcher from Kiwiland on a fact finding tour of Canada. nice to show off some.
Not that they were too impressed. Louise remarked that it was the weediest hemp field she had ever seen. Certainly over the last week or so the weeds have taken off, including a lot of pigweed in the north field. Serious competition. One thing about organic production is that it doesn't always look pretty. But as the end use for this field will be silage, the people involved with cropping decisions here aren't too worried about extra green matter.
One of the other flora has been tentatively identified a vetch. To my ignorant eye it could be wild mustard or even a canola (those yellow flowers). Anyone know?
Many fauna too. With every step, pairs of birds thwumped out of the hemp and burst into the sky. At first I thought they were feasting on the immature green seeds, but there was better food about: hoppers. Many, many grasshoppers. But between the bird predators and other food choices, the hoppers weren't doing too much damage to the hemp.
Hemp height was very varied all through the site, mostly depending on micro factors. The "ravine" from the south field -- a slight depression -- had no hemp growing. In higher areas, like the SE of the south field, the hemp was about 3'. Towards the NW of the north field, the hemp was over 6'.
We also found volunteers: I took pictures of a single hemp plant growing in the neighbouring oats; also a sunflower plant growing in the hemp.
(The neighbouring sunflower field is a beaut..a real weed-free crop. So's the oats. the north field, as speculated, had poor emergence because of poor soil fertility, hence the abundance of pigweed and other plants.)
Another observation: while this variety is one of those monoecious types, boasting male and female flowers on the same plants, many of the plants are demonstrating exclusively male traits. Variety "purity" has to be kept up as noted in " Changes in yield characteristics among various seed generations of hemp variety USO-14" (Journal of the International Hemp Association - Vol. 2, No. 2).
Sometimes you hear the grower curse of "too many males." While this may be true in some cases, it doesn't necessarily affect final yield overmuch. The hemp is fine.
Next update coming soon: Aug 10th: FIELD II -- people in the plants.
arthur
