Hokkaido Commencement

We ended 2019 growing season thinking about the fiber program for 2020. I had split the Hokkaido seeds between me and another grower interested in helping with the fiber program. This was November 2019 (ish). I sprouted the first batch of seeds and without much thinking saved the two best males, each one distinct. We cloned all the females and flowered the original seed plants once everything was backed up. I was merely trying to increase the seed source of my Hokkaido to do a larger exploration outdoors. I took around 40 seeds sprouted them, ended up with around 25 mothers. I flowered those 25 with the intention of using an “overflowering” technique to test sexual stability. Around week 7 most of the flower were completely ripe and because I wasn’t deeply paying attention to this little run I didn’t notice until then that several of my females had a pronounced nose and visible resin clearly different from the rest. I made notes and organized my mothers by expression/grade. Grade A was the top resin producing plants with a much stronger nose. Chemotype was really the main factor for the “A” grade. Anything strong enough in nose and resin production was higher. All those samples were individually labeled under “A” as an example “1-A”. They were different slightly in structure and leaf width from the more fiber leaning plants. I made a B batch of similar visible resin plant but with less pronounced nose and a C group for the obliviously fiber leaning plants who still had a nice coating of visible glands.

Around that same time my partner in the Hokkaido project sprouted around 40 seeds to being the same process of increasing seed source. I continued my flowering of the initial test batch of the Hokkaido for another 4-6 weeks. I did end up culling 10 plants who intersexed around week 11 and another 3 of the fiber leaning plants were doing nothing so they were harvested, and ear marked for pollination to progress my fiber goals. My only other real notes of this small indoor run were a couple of plants of each group did have a decent “reflower” that produce a nice second wave of heavy flower production. I did not photo document this journey, at the time this was grunt work to see if I could find a viable fiber leaning plant for a job I MIGHT get if everything falls into place and I needed a large enough seed stock to make that make sense. I did see some potential after purchasing the seeds when I found an article talking about how much wild hemp was around in Japan and how most of the wild types wouldn’t get you high, but it went on to that two people were cultivating Hokkaido strain for hash production and got arrested. Couldn’t’ dig up much more than a Japanese news clipping about the two going to jail but the story piqued my interest. 2% THC is not enough to be worth cultivating for hash production in any meaningful way so what were they doing? Between the visible glands, surprising scent and the news articles I had my interest peaked.

Not to long after my grower friend calls me and tells me he tested a Hokkaido at 8 weeks and he’s nearly sure it has a decent CBD/CBG/THC production. I own a Purple Pro unit, so I figured fuck it, let’s test and see the truth. We tested his flower and got a plant with 5% CBD and no detectable THC. Interesting for sure, already almost double what I expected to be the top of the production range of the strain. At this point since we’ve busted out the Purpl Pro we test the ground remains of my original indoor stress test. We get 8% CBD and 6% THC. WTF!

Okay, now we know we’ve got something that’s going to be a larger project than we first thought but you never know for sure. You always kind of hold back too much excitement because, who knows could be a fluke or some remnants in the grinder broke loss and threw the testing, who knows. So, we plan a careful path forward.

To test the next batch, I needed all of them under my watchful eye. So, I made room in my plans for my no till terraced rows. A bit on the rows, the rows were tilled 3 years ago when we started this CBD project. The cycle for the soil starts in fall with harvest of the hemp. Already we would have sown Winter Rye, Vetch, Tillage Radishes, and common early Oats. We also stopped the minimal weeding the rows require about mid-way through flower. At this point the Rabbits I raise move into large ground pens that rotate through the rows until the weather forces us off till spring. We move back in spring and the rabbits finish off whatever remains or regrows until around April 1. At that point we add over the rabbit droppings and cover crops that didn’t get eaten a mixture of Fish Bone Meal, Oyster Shell Flour, Kelp Meal, Greensand, Soybean Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Bat Guano and then we unroll hay we cut the season previous as a thick mulch layer over the rabbit droppings and amendments. The local weather usually blesses us with abundant spring rain, so we let everything settle till May 1. At that point we seed with a buckwheat. This year I tried a pink buckwheat from Japan and didn’t have a good seed set but I bet with a fresher seed I’d have better luck. Around Mother’s Day we plant Autoflowers and June 1 we plant full seasons. I interplant Hemp, Tomatoes, Peppers, Sunflowers and Basil. So now you know my basic recipe for decent, heavy organic, outdoor flower.

Now onto the next phase of testing. We have 4 As, 5 Bs, 7 Cs and a bunch of clearly remarkably similar plants with the same smell and look. We took the 25ish mothers who passed our tests and now with a sort of intentional order of uniquely smelling and higher resin “A”s, Higher Resin “B”s who didn’t share the same unique nose as the A group, and the best fiber plants in the “C” group with the ones with the lowest number in the C group being the most resinous. We planted most of the remainder of the seeds in the first half of June. Veg plants hit the ground mid to late Jun depending on how long they needed to harden off. My plan again was to see what my selections from the indoor produced outdoors and pollinate branches as plants showed us promise. This was complicate further by the unexpected cannabinoid production.

By mid-September most of the Hokkaido were fully ripe. We started the harvesting the obvious fiber crops and I looked back over my indoors notes and remembered that reflowering trait I wanted to explore. We pollinated at basically max ripeness the best of the best of the seeds, the previous mothers and the selected from the other grower. I pollinated the C group with a mixed pollen to increase the fiber lean in the plants and (hopefully) give us enough seed to start with at least a full acre of Hokkaido to explore as a fiber plant if we get the job. I pollinated the B with a mixed pollen of the two males of my original selections, one lanky and thick stemmed and one shorter but overall, maybe a stronger plant with the best stem rub smells of the batch. The A1 plant was pollinated by the shorter but overall better plant labeled as Hoki 2. It was clear by this point that some of the Hokkaido line deviated in a potentially beneficial ways that could allow for some unique isolation projects. It was also clear that the 1A, the 1C both were producing higher visible glands than anyone else with 1A having a bright contrast between the plant and the glands heads which stayed in a sort of milky color throughout the plant’s life. Both of those plant again showed the reflowering trait outdoors and packed on a clear coat of icky sticky