Where do we grow all this Cannabis? Part ‘A’
If you need to start at the first post in this series, that is here. This is part A of Where to Grow, Explaining “Feral Cannabis” which is beyond first generation growth and appears to be ‘naturally seeded’ by animal and bird droppings. Usually when I start a conversation about Cannabis and promote my vast awareness of the plant with my limited understanding someone askes about land needed. Most of my prior knowledge I learned from listening to the stories of weeducated individuals in all sorts of worlds during the last of the illegal years from about 1977 in a Northern British Columbia small town, then researching truths online after 2005. The community I grew up in was rumoured to have supplied the Cannabis to Prince George and points east, west, north and south of the hub city during many Prohibition years ending in 2018 in Canada. In return, before the hype of today with the opiate problem, Cannabis was often traded for cocaine and heroin and they said it layered the community a foot thick with those drugs. It has grown up since then, but I feel it created the problems today, entirely created by an insane law that lumped Cannabis worse than those 2 drugs. But that’s so far from the question I added it to show the background as I listened to many stories that were proven as fact as I became as weeducated with no growing experiences. I’ll break this into 2 parts so you see my reasoning of where to grow and how it adds, not takes away from, existing biomass by filling a niche in agriculture today.
Cannabis in the wild
Early settlers of North America first settled here because the land was prime to grow cannabis for the homeland and their own needs as they settled. The land was hard to secure and grow cannabis in the ‘Homeland’ due to conflicts changing borders and taking prime farmland during times of conquest. In the decades before the ‘European invasion’ created the United States, the new nation used Cannabis in part to break free from Europe and become independent. They used the plant diversely, and it needed very little human intervention while growing, allowing settlers to shape the country. Cannabis’s end product of Hemp was needed for war efforts at home, and supplied materials like rope and sails needed to explore, food and materials for settlements among all the other resources the new land offered. Most of that early cannabis escaped the plantations, which were often abandoned and forgotten as generations progressed. Speed further from 1899 to well after 2000 in North America, law enforcers took care of ‘ditch’ or wild Cannabis with prejudice where and when they noticed it.
It still grows all over the globe, including North America. Unseen in a ditch, spread free and proud, perhaps on a remote mountainside or sheltered in an unseen valley, it grows. Studies show the Feral Cannabis to be very low quality and could be an industrial class for at least the seeds, much more with awareness. Seed-eating small animals sit around the bottom of the food chain and birds love Cannabis seed in their diet. So do larger creatures who eat vegetation and those also eat those creatures. Cannabis Seed survives the digestive tract and is deposited in a smelly pile of nutritious fresh fertiliser, even when going through the predator as a second digestive tract. They found the plant most often in areas of disturbed and compacted soils like ditches and industrial lands abandoned, perhaps deposited by a rodent or bird chasing a rodent, perhaps by both while and after consumption of the smaller prey. Where Feral Cannabis grew, it tolerated other species native to the environment and appeared to improve the soil and enhance surrounding biodiversity. Refer Madness calls it invasive. In the wild it exists peacefully coexisting naturally globally, flourishing strong without any human intervention. Including in North America where Refer Madness laws call it a ‘Noxious Weed’, but not officially as the Google keyword used on Google brought up all sorts of government websites and info suggesting noxious weed info links, but no mention of Ferial or wild Cannabis, Hemp at their websites on the subject. Stay tuned for part ‘B’ in about an hour!