Why Hokkaido.

At the start of our hempire in North Carolina we purchased a considerable volume of seeds. Ace had an offer for Hokkaido as a freebie which we often selected and we also purchased a few packs as we collected seeds. We ended up with around 100 Hokkaido seeds. Around that same time a state ag agency had contacted our cooperative to help manage an expansion of state funded hemp fiber research program. We had experience with large scale logistics of cannabis production and had forced ourselves to become good at contract negotiations. Before we went much farther with the state I contacted the farmers on the ground to discuss the current genetics, planting tactics, and cultivation methods. That discuss was shocking to say the least but to keep on point I wanted to explore more fiber producing cultivars before the project started. We put it out in our network we’d need help testing potential fiber strains. We tested a ton of various fiber producing hemp strains all over the southern US at various friends, neighbors, growers, and hemp farmers we are networked with. Unfortunately that state sponsored fiber program lost its funding and this project never got off the ground much more than the 100 or so acres that the project began with.

I want to be clear right from the start. I had zero intention of finding anything more than a possible higher CBD leaning mom that we could use in breeding projects and maybe a seed source we could open pollinate to help our company access that fiber program because I honestly thought we might be able to make that program profitable.

The Hokkaido grows discussed in this blog were performed by me and a long-time experienced grower helping do some heavy lifting with pollen chucking for increasing seed sources. Later in the blog we add another talented grower and part of our core group moving forward here.