The Hemp That Outgrew Me

One of my favorite days at the Capitol is "Ag Day" when a variety of produce and agriculture-related organizations come to the Capitol to lobby.  More importantly for me, though, are the free samples of fruits, honey, and seeds and plants.  One year, I acquired a packet of "Tropic Sun" sunn hemp seeds from the O`ahu Resource Conservation & Development Council.

 

I held the packet for a while, not knowing whether I was willing to take up valuable lanai real estate growing hemp.  This year, though, I decided I'd pay more attention to improving soil quality to see if it made a difference in my plant health.  The seed packet said Sun Hemp is a good nitrogen fixer, so I figured it couldn't hurt.

I planted it in my largest self-watering container, and that plant grew faster than any other plant I've seen.  It is now about as tall as I am (which is not saying much), but it did it all pretty effortlessly.  The plant looks nothing like hemp, by the way, so I doubt anyone flying overhead will notice.

I was just reading about how this magical plant improves soil and came across the term "green manure".  Intrigued, I read on.  From what I gather, green manure is a term used in organic farming to refer to plants that fix nutrients and store them in their roots, then when "plowed down" release these nutrients into the soil.  I didn't really know what "plowed down" meant, so I looked it up.  Since most people talk about this in farm-scale terms, plowing down involves cutting down or pulling up the plant before it flowers, letting it rot a bit, then sort of folding it into the soil to allow the nutrients to go into the soil.  For lanai container gardening, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to cut the plant up then mix it into soil, but I plan to basically pull up my plant, cut it up into pieces, and mix it into soil.

I tried to do some online searching about whether I could throw some into my worm bin.  I think I can, although green manure can generate a lot of heat, so I guess I'll just not put a lot in so the worm bin doesn't get too hot.