On October 15th to 17th, INDHemp in Fort Benton sponsored their “Goodness of Hemp” Summit at the Heritage Inn in Great Falls. We, at the Quinn Institute (QI), were invited to prepare a poster board to showcase our hemp research project, which we launched this season in collaboration with INDHemp and the Montana Salinity Control Association (MSCA). The conference covered a lot of ground, from exciting new hemp products (like hemp work shirts soon to be in North 40) and construction materials to market opportunities, funding, growing tips, new varieties and even the role of artificial intelligence in hemp production. The industrial hemp market is booming, but growing hemp, especially fiber hemp, is typically reliant upon irrigation.
For those who joined us at the QI field day in July, you might recall our unconventional approach: instead of bringing water to our hemp, we brought the hemp to the water. On QI’s dryland fields, that means into and around a saline seep. The commonly observed white salt crust in fields is caused by the evaporation of water which entered the ground on a high spot nearby and then was forced up to the surface at a low spot loaded with dissolved salts. When this water evaporates, it leaves the dissolved salts behind which form a white salt layer in which nothing can grow. Reclamation of the seeps usually involves surrounding the seep with a high water use crop like alfalfa to suck out the water before it breaks out of the surface of the seep area. If the water does not reach the breakout area of the seep, the salt on top of the ground will soon be dissolved and carried back into the ground with the next season’s rains and after a few years, the land destroyed by the seep will be reclaimed. the Since seeps are seen as an area of profit loss on farms in our region, Bob has long had a fascination with using their extra moisture to, as he says, “turn a liability into an asset” and produce a higher value crop. His first experiments, going back 20 years, involved growing vegetables in the seep. The results were less than appetizing—high salt levels meant many plants didn’t survive, and those that did had an off taste. The positive result came surprising from the control plots located out of the seep area. When Bob found that he could produce dry land vegetables successfully in this area, it set him on a whole new course of study to see what was really possible. But that is a story for another time.
Bob had noticed fiber hemp reaching heights of eight to eleven feet. This sparked the idea of using hemp’s thirstiness to suck up the water before it reached the breakout area of the seep and reclaim the seep for grain and pulse crops. The question is: Can hemp reclaim saline seep quicker than alfalfa and during the process will the economic return from hemp exceed the return from using alfalfa for the same purpose. This season, we planted three varieties of hemp in our saline seep—one for fiber, one for oil seed, and a dual-purpose variety. We also planted strips of barley and alfalfa for comparison. These crops were planted in 32 foot strips in groups of four seven times across seep as you can see in the photo. We wanted to surround the seep but also cross it to see how the crops responded to the increasing salt concentrations as they neared the breakout are of the seep in the middle which you can see is white in the photo and where nothing was growing. During the growing season, Josh, with some help from the MSCA, collected various data on the hemp as it grew and recorded the water table levels around the seep. What we saw so far is that the fiber hemp had the most salt tolerance. We had trouble with alfalfa emergence so did not get a good stand of that. Grasshoppers attacked the dual-purpose hemp first and ate it down to the stems before it produced any seeds. They then attacked the oil seed hemp and ate all the leaves but not before some seed heads formed. After that was gone, they then ate most of the leaves off the fiber hemp. Over the winter we will analyze the data and determine the plans for the next season. For updates, follow us on Instagram, or feel free to reach out anytime—we’re always happy to chat and hear your ideas and suggestions or give a tour of the site!
