Hemp thread?

I take it the hemp thread was deleted and my awesome and uncontroversial post is lost forever?  :/

It was doomed from the start. Sorry I missed your post.

It just seemed to go wonky. 

I think it is a topic that could have been okay, but ....

craftylittlemonkey wrote:
It was doomed from the start.

I'm not sure why it should be have been doomed from the start.  It seems like the plant has many useful properties, and 'function stacking' is, after all, a basic permaculture principle.  I'd actually like to start a new thread focusing entirely on the 'non-medicinal' features of the plant to explore the possibilities. 

I've spent most of my life living in some kind of brain-washed stupor about the evils of plants that might get used 'improperly', and I think it's time I grew out of it and started seeing what else the hemp plant has to offer.  After all, I grow grapes and am happy to ignore the fact that most people just turn them into wine, so why not explore what else Cannabis sativa has to offer?

hey,

yeah, hemp is a great function stacker. But i wouldn't exclude medicinal uses.
Just exclude the recreational ones, we all know about that anyway, whats new about that...
all over the world hemp is a medicine commonly prescribed (in low an controled doses). Just like amfetamines, morfine, and many other common medicines can be (ab)used for recreational purposes, hemp can as well. But thats the boring well known stuff, who wants to talk about that anyway. There are numerous other sites where you can find info or talk about that...

But whoah, there i almost started to go in the wrong direction again.

Cant we put a clear and obvious disclaimer in the starting post, with a disclaimer that when using it medicinal, only doing this on doctors orders. And that people have to stay away from the controversial side of this story.

I would love to talk about hemp and its many uses.

then again i can see why, if you don't want to have political talks, you could be a bit hesitant about this topic.

Come to think of it, the disclaimer and topic guidelines (rules) would disappear really soon probably, with so many uses for one plant, we'll have a second and third page in no time. And i always wonder how many people do actually read the previous pages, specially the first, of a topic before they react...

It's just that any mention of the medicinal aspect seemed to trigger a pretty heated response, so I thought that if we restricted it severely, maybe deleting any post which mentioned it (except the first one explaining that it wasn't to be talked about) then maybe we could discuss the useful aspects of the plant without it sinking into the slanging match it did yesterday. 

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Hemp thread anyone? 

Sorry, I couldn't resist. 

aha, the medicinal use is controversial as well? and there i came, like an elephant stumbling into a china cupboard... (sorry couldnt resist translating a dutch proverb)

So we'll stick to anything but the herbal use of hemp.
clothes, rope, paper, oil, seed, fodder, dynamic accumulator, rampant mulch plant (thats easy to keep in check), flacks, fibres, skincream, wine, etc...



Do you think that would be okay?
I missed the whole thread yesterday...

The ag and ind uses of hemp should, in my book, be a perfectly viable topic. Even if it is not presently legal where a person lives there should be no problems talking about it for all those uses Joop mentioned. Talking about it we may learn something and see fit to push our reps in government.

As for medicinal uses, there are definite valid uses. Some people just believe that because recreational use can be or is illegal and can cause valid safety concerns that somehow valid medical use should not be permitted. Part of that reasoning is the possibility of some people abusing the medicinal drug. That seems to have many folks concerned. We already have abuse as an issue with prescribed drugs such as some pain killers. People steal them, sell them , obtain fraudulently, etc. I don't hear anyone advocating the withdrawl of all pain killers from the market. Seems to be a double standard there.

Sigh. You guys are not doing HEMP any favours by referring to it's supposed medicinal and recreational properties. What you're talking about is POT and that is a totally different plant. Growing the actual plants is pretty much the same for both but they are two different plants, with two different sets of issues.

There are people working very hard at getting hemp deregulated because it is useful for fibers for paper and fabric and it's seeds are highly nutritious and a good source of oil for industrial purposes. And there are people working to decriminalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes. The two are not interchangeable or connected in any way. In fact, an association with marijuana is part of hemp's problem, because they look alike people's rabid fear of drugs unfairly blackens hemp's reputation as well.

Exactly - so you start a thread making this distinction and forbidding any mention of the other - and then you report to moderator anyone stepping off the 'topic'.  Check back every so often (watch over your thread) and re-report any controversial posts.  After a bit, as those who do not listen and follow directions see they are getting deleted move on, your thread should progress nicely (no guarantees for the future, but we can always hope). 

I do not believe Paul has a problem with the Hemp NOT Pot subject, it's just that he has to delete any thread that goes off - I'm sure you understand 

So start over...

Sigh. You guys are not doing HEMP any favours by referring to it's supposed medicinal and recreational properties

  Dang!  Me Bad!!!  Sorry about that. CLM is exactly right. But you see, how easy it is for even someone with good intentions to stray.

That's all I'm sayin', that's all I'm sayin'. The two are different and the names of each are not interchangeable. At the very least it's confusing.
That said, I LOVE hemp. Seeds and fiber. I just watched a video about a book written regarding nettles used for clothing fiber, that was interesting. I can get nettles anywhere but harvesting them to spin is not an easy or pain free task. Hemp would be an awesome thing to have growing for that. I'd love to have it in my garden. It's a weed and grows like one, it doesn't really need any help from other plants though perhaps it would be a benefit to them. Once it's past the tasty young shoot stage most grazers won't touch it either and it needs no food or special care. It's hardy. It self seeds too.

CLM is totally right, those strains are so different.

like it's relatives, the marijuana plant and hops, hemp is supposed to grow well in walnut guilds. I have seen hops climbing through walnuts tree, so that seems to check out. dont have walnut myself or i'd try it out, as it is legal here (people growing hemp and flacks even get subsidized out here).

i d love to get more land and start growing walnuts.
but now im going way offtopic.

so what now, a new thread, 'hemp (not marijuana)'

I just got home after a packed day.

I would be okay with the subject if folks didn't get their dander up.  But it seems folks do get their dander up.  So I think it is best that we drop it for now.

I WANT HEMP TALK NOW

Whoa. Permies have cannaphobia too? Weird.

Cannabis sativa has a long history of ethnobotanical use that is wide and far-reaching. This is one of the earliest domesticated crops. Moses used it, for YHWH's sake!

I'm seeing some definitions here that seem to want to limit possible relationships with this plant to the strictly functional (medical, fiber, food, et) or pigeonhole it because it's used recreationally. But what about spiritual relationships cannabis or the awareness-changing effects of cannabis. Do these have roles to play in perma-cultures, and developing intimacy with the land and the world around us. I think they do, at least in my corner of the world. It's probably different where you are. Why censor this discussion? If you're not into it, then don't show up. This is the law of two feet, right?

Because it is illegal and a red flag issue, that's why.
I can see this thread going the way of the last one right quick. Too bad.

There are thousands of conversations we have on these forums that are very interesting and don't have anybody getting wiggy.

This is a topic I really don't care about.  So I don't care if we talk about it or not.  But I do care about perfectly good people getting wiggy over something. 

And, most importantly, when somebody questions my censorship choices, I really feel the need to censor. 

I locked another thread on hemp.

Somebody thought my concerns in this space was "silly". I think it is okay to think of my concerns as silly, but that makes me think that people are going to pursue a path that could be disrespectful of my concerns.

I suggested a discussion comparing the useful properties of hemp and stinging nettle - apparently, they are quite similar and, I've heard, that nettle has some superior properties. And nettles have no political gobbledygook.

I was going to let the discussion go a bit, but .... it seemed to be getting too political and I have enough to do without having to go through and pick the icky stuff out of threads.

It would be great if someday all those help laws could just be deleted and we can just have a plant that has uses.

I've noticed that all things hemp are regularly explored by Hatfields and McCoys. Not sure what this means demographically.

For some common sense comparison of hemp as a fuel, check out studies conducted by Canadian cement maker, LaFarge. Hemp proved difficult to process into fuel for their purposes due to it's resistance to being chopped. It produced less BTU per acre than corn.

It's a legal farm crop here and in many other countries. Great coarse fibre crop. Fuel value - not so much. China produces vast quantities, but cotton still dominates clothing manufacture. This has evereything to do with the workability and other qualities of cotton and nothing to do with government regulation against hemp.

I would think that hemp could be inter-cropped with corn and with sugar cane. The weed suppressive quality of hemp should allow for greater total biomass in both combinations. As for method of harvest, this is likely to produce a tangled mess that would resist traditional harvest methods of both corn and cane.

Any study or comparrison of energy or fibre value can be found by studying the farming culture of the many countries which allow hemp production. You'll find that it is neither demonised nor romanticized since it is not a political hot potato. Farmers grow it if the market can absorb it and they can turn a profit. It hasn't produced an egaltarian Eden in any of those countries. It has produced fibre, seed and oil.

In Victoria there are at least 50 places where you can buy hemp clothing, seed or oil. I eat the seed regularly and my rain jacket is hemp. I've never touched marijuana except during gro-op cleanups. One guy just grabbed the buds and abandoned ship leaving me a huge house full of stinky plants to deal with.

One problem I can see with hemp production in B.C. is that the pollen might contaminate the outdoor marijuana crop. Although illegal, it is our number one cash crop. There's always going to be a criminal element. And there's a lot of rotten things that criminals engage in. I'm glad to see these guys bring in millions to help us balllance trade with the Americans.

So hypothetically, where would hemp fit in a guild? Obviously you'd be growing for seed, as a polyculture, unless made up of similar, closely spaced plants (which might make it difficult to keep them from competing), there would be more branching than is desired for fibre. I did hear, once, about a guy out of Peterborough, Ontario, who built a hemp pulping and processing machine that took the whole plant and produced a paper that needed no bleach, but I've been stymied every time I go to try and find out anything else. So its a dynamic accumulator with a long taproot that produces what is likely to be excellent ramial wood. I wonder if goats would eat the plant. How many other woody-stemmed plants can grow as quickly, and with as much in the way of significant nutritional content for humans and animals?
So evaluating it strictly as a forage crop in a mix, it seems an excellent candidate for a pasturage mix, with similar physical characteristics in some ways to sunflowers. I would really like to know what animals will/won't eat which part(s) of the plant, or won't touch it at all, but if it were suitable for goats, I would venture a guess that it might be for other ruminants. I have no idea at all about pigs, but my guess would be they'd chow down, and to chickens it would likely be just more green bits and seeds left behind by the ruminants scattered between larvae-filled piles of former plant matter.
To spin Paul's initial suggestion about comparing and contrasting hemp and nettles, I would love to see their individual biological needs and growth characteristics compared to see if they would do well in a guild together. One thing I am particularly interested in is winter grazing as an alternative to haying. In Canada, I'm resigned to likely having to make silage, but I think a pasture guild that would stand through the heaviest snows, acting as its own wind-barrier and creating sheltered winter grazing in its lee would go a long way towards this end, and I have an idea that if hemp is suitable for the livestock I mentioned, that it could be an integral part of a solution to winter grazing in areas where it was previously unsuitable.
Wouldn't a biological wind screen that goes up in 90 days be significant to the practical application of tefa?

-CK