An Ornamental Grower’s Insight to Hemp: Considerations for High Quality Flower

David Raab, Roseville Farms, UF/IFAS Hemp Pilot Project Sponsor

Correspondence to: http://rosevillefarms.com/contact/

Also featuring Dr. Brian Pearson, Assistant Professor, UF/IFAS Mid-Florida Research and Education Center

This insights video is part of the blog series Perspectives from the Hemp Industry.

The Big Challenge

“It took us a long time to learn all the different things that we could get from a hemp flower and all the different uses for it… So advice to anybody getting into the hemp industry is understand how broad the industry is and pick a place.”

The Exciting Experience

“We ran a program that we were, I think we had 56,000 plants. We had eight eight rounds of 7000 plants and we were attempting to run a circuit where we would harvest every week. And the flowering period being an eight-week cycle. And we were successful with it in the sense that we were able to do it. But the overall quality of the product, because we were pushing it through fast didn’t meet the A plus grade standard.”

The Business Goal

“I had a focus which was providing a facility that would allow the exact same conditions 12 months of the year so that we could run varieties submitted by breeders from around the country. We wanted to test these varieties to make sure that they fit into the Florida growing schedule and to prove that they would go to flower and the flower would test lower than the federal and state standards for hemp… Hemp plants complement the nursery operation as its still all about growing high quality plants. The big difference is the customer base which is much different from ornamental plant buyers giving Roseville many opportunities in new markets.”

The Wisdom

“And so it doesn’t matter what it is, you have to learn how to grow something in the facilities that you’ve chosen to grow them in… So it was a big learning curve… I think the for us, the most enlightening thing was that we we were able to identify a niche, an area in the hemp market that we could focus on and be successful.”

 

 

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Posted: July 29, 2022


Category: Agriculture, Crops
Tags: Hemp, Hemp Perspectives


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