Industrial hemp is a non-psychoactive variety of the cannabis Sativa plant. Hemp and marijuana are both members of the cannabis Sativa family, but they are genetically different.
Industrial hemp has low Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content and high Cannabidiol (CBD) content, which gives hemp fiber its exceptional properties as a piece of fabric.
Hemp is a source of oilseed and fiber and is produced in over thirty nations globally. In the US, its production is managed under drug enforcement laws.
Though growing industrial hemp under trellis netting is not an easy task, it helps produce healthier sweeter hemp resulting in more profits. Before delving into growing industrial hemp under trellis netting, let’s understand what trellis is in the first place.
What Is a Trellis?
A trellis is a simple, flat structure of horizontal cross pieces and vertical supports that trains plants such as vines and shrubs to grow vertically. You can use it to grow plants indoors or outdoors or as an accent segment to enhance your yard privacy.
The idea behind using a trellis is to curve and weave shoots across the gaps in the simple structure. This enables the grower to influence plant growth and change the pattern to fit the cannabis grade best.
Why Grow Hemp under Trellis Netting
We grow hemp under trellis netting because it enables you to customize your planting method while saving water and protecting the environment.
We also grow hemp under trellis netting as it gives us the ability to grow different types of plants without damaging them. Similarly, it allows us to water the plants without compromising the crop’s quality for optimal quality of the final product.
Most people grow hemp as it grows faster than its non-cannabis counterpart, producing a larger crop with less land usage.
How to Trellis Hemp
Regardless of whether you need to grow just a few cannabis plants or you are itching to start a commercial operation, you need to yield as much bud as you can. To attain your goal, you have to choose the best genetics you can find.
You have to thoroughly research watering and nutrients techniques and diligently trim and top your plants.
Another undeniably cheap way to grow healthier plants and increase yields is trellising. But how can plastic nets or a few posts aid your hemp to get to its perfect growth? Trellising can do the trick for you.
Trellising is using a simple structure to organize and support a crop’s growth. A trellis can be made of plastic, metal, wooden, or constructed around a crop to support it. It can also be a square netting done over a plant at particular stages of growth.
Kinds (types) of trellis
There are two types of trellis
- Vertical
- Horizontal
Here’s how to do vertical trellising
- Place bamboo, PVC, or wood deep into the corners of your pot or planter bed. Extend netted trellising throughout the stakes using planters tape or zip ties to fix the screen to the tape.
- As the crops grow, cautiously push the branches through those holes in the netting to offer structure and stability.
Horizontal Trellising
- Place your PVC, bamboo stakes, or wood in the corners of the grow space or planter bed to attach your net. When the plants reach the vegetative phase, just before flowering, cover the trellis net with big holes over the crops’ whole canopy.
- Loop the tops of your crops beneath the net till the whole canopy sits at a similar height.
- As the crops keep growing, the uniform height will feed almost all of the energy to your favored canopy, enabling as many flowers as possible to continue growing out of the holes in the netting.
- When it’s time for your crop to flower, please make use of another large net to drape the top of your crops to offer support to heavy flowers that may otherwise collapse under their weight.
When Should You Use Trellis
If you are prepared for superb and beautiful hemp every year, start adding trellis during the flowering stage or right before it. You do this to gain the upper hand over the hemp, as you’ll be able to control how the hemp grows without any problems. More shoots translate to more fruits hence increased yield.
Why Use Trellis
The benefits of using trellis far outweigh the struggle you may go through. Here are some of them:
- Enhances air circulation, therefore, preventing bud rot
- Deters pests and insects
- Creates additional space in your field
- Enables more exposure to sun resulting in more buds
- Permits pollinators to pollinate the hemp easily.
- Minimizes crop’s exposure to many fungal diseases
Who Can Use Trellis
Cages and trellises are regular plant support that we use in a vegetable garden. Some varieties of bean peas require something to climb.
Vine plants such as cucumbers, squash, and melons produce cleaner, straighter fruit if you grow them on a trellis. When we grow hemp under the trellis, it helps us manipulate the plant to produce more yields, bringing more money into our pockets.
Recommended Trellis Netting Type
Professionals in growing industrial hemp use tangle-free netting. Some use green trellis because it’s unnoticeable from a distance and does not draw extra attention to your plants.
Trellis netting like other agriculture netting arrives in roll widths of 120 ” 48”, and 60″ or in roll lengths of 3,281′. You can customize it to your needs. The hole size of the mesh is 6-1/4″ x 6-1/2″ for maximum support and is built to be gentle on your crop to stop damage through abrasion.
Where to Buy the Trellis Netting
You can buy trellis netting in your local agricultural shops, online or from manufacturers such as https://eyouagro.com/
Why Trellis
Almost all hemp genetics grow well outdoors as the sun faithfully moves across the sky all day long, enabling every bud to receive adequate sunlight.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t occur when growing the plant indoors because the lights are motionless above the plants.
So, it doesn’t completely light the sides. Besides, when growing your plant indoors, you need to ensure that the plant canopy is as uniform as possible due to reducing the light intensity as the crops get farther from the source of light.
That’s where trellising comes in handy to help you spread enough light to every bud site.
If you do it correctly, you can increase your yields by up to 30%.
Remember to trellis your plants in the flowering stage as it’ll be challenging to move the plant once trellised.
Prune your hemp to prepare them for trellising in a vegetative state. When you shape your plants, it’ll be effortless to spread them out on your screen.
The main reason behind using a trellis net is to achieve uniformity of your canopy to ensure maximum light distribution and avoid wastage of the precious light when it hits the table.
How to Install Trellis Netting
- Set up a post on the four corners of the table and stretch a trellis net on the top.
- Slowly, push the trellis net down. Carefully pull the top of the net through each square of the net. Ensure you do not harm the plants when doing so.
- Once you get the net down the net far enough, start tucking the tops of the plants- this allows the higher part of the plant to be even with the lower parts.
- After one day, the plants will sprout back up and grow through the net. This will occur throughout the growing process. The tops sticking out too far will be even with the lower part of the plants and give you a bigger bud.
Conclusion
Isn’t it amazing that just a single crop can fulfill almost all human needs? Industrial hemp can house us, treat us, feed our livestock, and cleanse our soil. You can achieve all this by using each part of your hemp plant.
And the good news is that you can grow hemp under a simple structure such as a trellising to increase the yield and go laughing all the way to the bank.
If you have any questions about trellis or any other agriculture protection textile, drop us an email info@eyouagro.com or visit our website www.eyouagro.com, we are always here to help you.
