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| Sunday, August 16, 2020
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SOGoodHerb.com
GROWING
HARDY SEEDS IN ASHLAND
HEMP LOVES COMPANY
Ashland hemp farmer uses corn, beans, squash, melons, herbs and grains to keep his soil happy By John Darling
W
COURTESY PHOTOS
Chris Hardy cuts up melons grown on his Ashland farm. Hardy calls beans growing up through his hemp plants (above right) “Grandma beans,” because the heirloom seeds have been in his family since the 1800s.
e’ve all seen those long empty rows between hemp plants blighted with weeds and plastic mulch. Well, Chris Hardy of Hardy Seeds in Ashland is using a system to make them Earth-friendly and food-productive, interplanting with squash, melon, herbs, grains, beans and cover crops, and marketing their seeds as well. In the past season, on his farm on Eagle Mill Road, Hardy interplanted CBD hemp with 7,000 pounds of squash. He’d harvest them, cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, puree and bake the squash for half an hour, shape them into 20-pound blocks, freeze them and sell them to Grants Pass schools and the Ashland Food Co-op. “It’s great to add in many recipes, like lasagna,” says Hardy, whose website, growhardyseeds.com, boasts it’s “opensource, non-GMO and certified organic seeds, locally adapted and grown.”