It’s Growing Season at Big Top Farms! This is the time of year that you can find us walking around talking to the plants. We are living by our motto, “Keep The Girls Happy at All Times.” Mother Nature is doing her part, with hot days and cool nights (Diurnal effect…vocab word of the day) and the plants love it! Nutrients and moisture are carefully monitored, pushing the plants to take advantage of our short High Desert growing season.
Sykes and Larry have been giving our Greenhouse Princesses lots of extra attention, with special nutritional encouragement and more beauty sleep (light deprivation) resulting in the plants moving to full flower. Why light deprivation? The hemp plants are photo sensitive and typically rely on the natural shortening of day length to signal to the plant that it is time to flower to ensure survival of the species. In the greenhouse, we can create this natural instinct artificially by pulling black-out curtains and regulating the amount of sunlight, thus changing the length of day, which causes the plants to flower early. This gives us the advantage of being able to stagger our harvest and reach market in July and August. In comparison, our Outdoorsy Gals who have stretched their roots out in the volcanic soils and soaked up long days of Summer sunlight, will be ready for harvest in September and October. We love them both equally and enjoy the flexibility that the diversity allows.
We are looking forward to seeing the fruits of our labor in some cool new genetics, along with old favorites, from the tried-and-true Oregon CBD, as well as a unique variety of exciting genetics from some outstanding boutique plant breeders. Be looking for flower with some really great nose and with some of the sought after “new” cannabinoids. For Big Top Farms, it’s all about quality and remaining innovative in the hemp industry.
See you in the field!
-Pam
