Bulk Organic Hemp Seeds Available Commercially
The East Fork Cultivars breeding program has come to a special fruition this year, as we are ready to release our first commercial hemp seed lines for the upcoming season. (Hurray for this milestone!) Limited amounts of seed will be available starting in mid-February.
We’re thrilled to be able to offer our Oregon Guava, Oregon Sweetgum, and a fresh release of Sour Pineapple to growers this year – and potentially a few small special releases, to be announced. The Oregon Guava and Oregon Sweetgum seed is also the first Organic Certified seed commercially available from our East Fork-bred genetic lines.
Our partner farms have offered rave reviews about the qualities of our genetics.
“We’ve had a great experience with Oregon Sweetgum, Oregon Guava, and Sour Pineapple. All have unique and desirable attributes, both during the growing season and in the marketplace. Our farm team’s internal blind taste test selected two of the three for our best cultivars of 2021.”
To further develop our Sour Pineapple variety and seed, East Fork partnered with Infinite Tree, a cannabis research and production farm nestled along Southern Oregon’s Applegate River. One of the first hemp farms to achieve USDA Organic certification, Infinite Tree brings together seed production, rigorous outdoor trials, and a production nursery that supplies farmers across the country with young plants and feminized seed.
“Sour Pineapple is a standout cultivar in every way. When visitors to our research farm ask things like, ‘Is this a clonal population?’ or say ‘This has to be marijuana right, look at those buds!’ – you know you have a winner.
Sour Pineapple is a winner: early maturing flower, unique and intense aromatic profile, beautiful dense buds and a vigorous, carefree, and homogenous population in the field.”
The process to reach this point has been painstaking, as breeding demands a meticulous attention to science, a strong horticultural knowledge base, and as a developed aesthetic palate for cannabis traits. Since 2016, East Fork Cultivars has put considerable effort and resources into our breeding program.
Our major focus through the years has been breeding new Type 3 (CBD-dominant) plants and working to stabilize them through inbreeding, with the intent to produce novel and exciting hybrids. This process allows us to create new varieties of vibrant, potent craft hemp that can be sold nationwide and even internationally.
Each year we produce multiple new crosses on our OLCC-licensed (adult-use) cannabis farm, and then select the most excellent and unique plants for further breeding work or use as production plants within the adult use system. When we find promising new Type 3s, we work to breed out the THC and stabilize the desirable characteristics that caught our attention, then legally export these plants out of the OLCC system and into our Department of Agriculture-licensed hemp farm.
J&J Organics grew several East Fork hemp cultivars last year for essential oil steam distillation, seeking terpene diversity and intensity.
“From our Biodynamic tinctures to our certified organic hemp essential oil, it is critical our products are not only effective, but also represent the spectrum hemp potentially offers. This starts with genetics.
Once again, East Fork’s hemp varieties inspire. They have complex terpene profiles, intriguing scents, and rock solid production numbers.”
Verifying a robust standard level of genetic consistency is a multi-stage process. Each year we pick around fifteen to thirty new crosses and lines that we’ve been inbreeding for trial out in our fields. These smaller trials demonstrate the developmental stages of these plant lines by showing how consistent (or not) our selected chemical and morphological traits are within the population.
This year, we saw many of the plant lines we have been working on showing the level, or near-level, of uniformity that we want to see before expanding our trials.
We then conduct increasingly larger scale trials with our most promising cultivars, and this past season we were able to grow several at production scale. In fact, this year, 94% of the plants in our hemp production field were produced in-house.
After a season or two of scaled production in multiple locations with partner farms and universities, we then feel confident to take these stabilized genetic lines and produce seed for commercial sale. It’s an excellent feeling of accomplishment for us to have reached this point with our sustained breeding work to date.
And don’t forget our grow-at-home seed packs for East Fork fans who want to cultivate our craft hemp plants in your own garden! We’ll be releasing seven or eight varieties in mid-February via eastforkandfriends.com. Even better, this year’s pricing will be $30/pack, a 25% discount from last year.
Are you a farmer interested in growing East Fork Cultivars hemp seeds?
Please complete the form below and our sales team will be in touch.
A copy of a valid hemp grower license is required to make a purchase.
