How CBD is Grown
Many hemp advocates love to point out how easy the plant is to grow in a variety of conditions. In the case of CBD, however, this is only partly true. Hemp grown for its fibre is indeed very easy to grow, making it a great eco-friendly fibre for use in clothing and textiles. But how is CBD made? Growing hemp for its chemical compounds is a bit more difficult. Cannabis Sativa, the plant from which CBD is extracted, can be quite tricky to grow if you plan to extract CBD from it for a variety of reasons.
How CBD is Made
The primary difference between growing hemp for CBD and growing hemp for fibre is how hardy the plants are. Hemp for use in clothing and textiles needs to be tough and hardy – you need to turn it into thread after all! The most valuable part of a hemp fibre plant is its durable stalk. The result of this is a very low-maintenance crop which can survive a variety of conditions. Growing hemp for CBD is a lot more complicated. For starters, CBD is produced at varying amounts throughout the life of the plant, leading to very short time windows to harvest the plant once it reaches maturity but before CBD levels drop. CBD production is also heavily controlled by plant nutrition, making proper irrigation/feeding vital. This takes a lot of man-power and time!
Lastly, unlike fibre hemp, CBD hemp farmers are most interested in the leaves and buds of the plants, which are much more delicate and cannot be harvested in the same way as stalks. Insects and mould are also much more interested in the leaves than the stalk, making CBD hemp much more susceptible to disease.
How our partner company grows hemp
The Hemp Farm is managed and run by a company called, Natural Science CBD, owned and operated by the director Phil. They own over 120 hectares of hemp fields in Bulgaria, and grow the crops using EU-regulated seeds. They chose Bulgaria because of their incredibly ahead-of-the-curve legislation on hemp/CBD production. They choose to use 100% organic practices when growing the hemp, as we want our customers to experience something as close to nature as possible. Once harvested, the hemp makes its way to the biomass extraction facility, where they use supercritical CO2 extraction to ensure unparalleled CBD purity. Once extracted, the isolate heads to their research and development lab in York, where they use it to manufacture all of our CBD oil. It takes a lot of work to get our CBD onto our shelves, but we believe it’s worth every penny!
Why quality is important to us
With all the fuss that goes into growing CBD hemp, why did I choose this company? Two reasons. Firstly, we want to ensure ethical practices at every level of our business. Many companies source their CBD from grey-market distributors without thinking about the impact that has on workers down the line. Unfortunately, the legal cannabis industry is rife with fake products and poor work conditions (click here for more info).
When we started Cultivate Kindness, we wanted to offer customers a premium, ethical experience. When you buy Cultivate Kindness CBD, you can rest assured that your experience is safeguarded by our seed-to-shelf model, with 100% transparency at every stage.