Abacus Hemp Organics Smokable Flowers

 Abacus products are aimed at the rapidly growing markets for topical pain relief and therapeutic skincare and are based on proprietary patent-pending technologies developed by Abacus. Abacus formulations combine advanced science with organic and natural ingredients to provide safe relief. Abacus currently offers two lines of products, marketed to the professional practitioner market, and CBDMEDIC, marketed to the consumer market. Abacus products are offered across the United States and are produced by a contract manufacturer in a cGMP compliant and audited manufacturing facility.

Growing hemp is just part of the equation. How one handles the plants both pre-and post-harvest makes the difference between good smokable flower full of beneficial cannabinoids and flavors, versus flower thats brown, crispy and harsh. 

We dry out the bulk of the moisture within the first few days, and then we lower the temp slightly to reduce humidity. By doing that, we slow it down; its a curing process. Just like tobacco productionyoure not just drying it, youre curing it. They chose to focus on rooted cuttings because, Zondag explains, hemp is a dioecious plant, meaning that it has male and female flowers on separate plants. Other examples of dioecious plants include honey locust. With simplehempco, you want females because the CBD oil is produced on the flowers of the hemp plant.

Female flowers produce a lot more CBD oil when the flowers are not fertilized, he says. Thats why we use cuttings use rather than seedlings. Unless you really know what youre doing, if you have a cutting, the plant produced from a cutting will be the same as the plant it came from.

In 2018, Driftless Area farmer Dylan Bruce was intrigued when he learned about the potential possibilities of hemp as a new crop. Bruce co-owns Circadian Organics certified organic produce farm, just outside of Viroqua, Wis., along with Skye Harnsberger and Keegan Murray-King. Murray-King had worked in the medical marijuana industry in California as a grower at farms specializing in boutique production. We were interested in it as a potential alternative crop that would use some of the same infrastructure that we were already growing, and hemps potential for rural revitalization, Bruce says. He comes from farming family, and hes also a researcher at UW-Madison. His work includes sustainable cropping systems and vegetable production.

Hes currently researching different fertilizer approaches that hemp farmers have been using throughout the state and how that affects compliance and the ratio of Cannabidiol to tetrahydrocannabinol THC. Because the prices of commodity biomass and smokable flower have dropped so much, Bruce observes that many CBD shop owners are demanding a lower price point.

But what the consumer really wants is an intensively cared for product thats going to taste great. In a lot of shops, there isn't a price stratification to reflect the differences in quality, so its become a case of the producer being squeezed from all sides. Selling smokable hemp through direct marketing as much as possible has been the most efficient way to get quality product to consumers while benefitting the producer, Bruce has found. As an agricultural product, Bruce says they can sell their CBD Hemp Flower just like they would their vegetables at a farm stand.

Their online store will have smokable product available this fall. Most lessons of Berkowitz class would translate to growing marijuana, but he only grows strains of cannabis with little to no THC, the active ingredient that makes pot users high. For now, that includes the stubborn Otto 2 and strains called Wife and Abacus. They can also conduct some independent research on cannabis, overseen by plant science professor Gerald Berkowitz and his graduate student Peter Apicella, who walked through the greenhouse Thursday pulling unsatisfactory plants.

Berkowitz is now one of about 25 faculty members working to form the new Connecticut Cannabis Research and Innovation Center, which is co-sponsoring a seminar Monday on medical marijuana its first public move. Were really zooming along in terms of being a university that is developing scholarship on cannabis," he said. "Theres a lot besides the class. The course itself is primarily taught by instructor Matthew DeBacco, who earned a masters degree at UConn studying how to organically keep mold at bay in plants. Its a continual challenge in the marijuana industry, so a few years ago, he started consulting with cannabis growers in Connecticut and Massachusetts, visiting their facilities to diagnose and solve whatever problems were hampering their hemp and medical marijuana.