Case Study: Heritage Farmacy's hemp with PRO-MIX® CONNECT

The Story of Mark Davidson, a Hemp Grower

In 2019, Heritage Farmacy (Crawfordsville, IN) participated in a pilot program launched by the state of Indiana. The program permitted the production of industrial hemp, which could then be used to produce extracts like CBD oil, following specific criteria.

As part of the pilot program, Mark Davidson, owner of Davidson Greenhouse and Nursery, and co-owner of Heritage Farmacy, wanted to try a new mycorrhizal inoculant on his organic hemp crop. Here is Mark’s story and his appreciation of PRO-MIX® CONNECT.

Growing Is Part of the Family’s DNA

Mark has been growing his whole life and has now been running the family farm for more than 20 years. Apart from hemp, he grows a wide variety of crops in greenhouse, from vegetables to flowers, bedding plants, succulents, cactus, trees, shrubs, etc. He takes pride in the feedback that he gets from his clients, seeing gardening as something that brings joy. He’s passionate about his work and loves to communicate his passion for his crops.

Why Choose to Grow Medicinal Hemp? 

For most of his adult life, Mark has suffered from Myofascial Pain Syndrome, a rare condition where muscle inflammation causes high levels of pain throughout the body. After 30+ years of day and night suffering, with no medication able to help, Mark came across CBD oil after one of his friends suggested a product from Colorado. Just like that, Mark’s pain was gone. He started reading to understand how hemp could help him, among many others, face many medical conditions with the use of natural products such as CBD oil.

With the opportunity of launching a pilot program in Indiana, Heritage Farmacy jumped into the project, looking to grow organic medicinal hemp, mainly dedicated to CBD oil extraction.

“That just made me really passionate about exploring this and figuring it out. [It’s] just been a pathway to not only create our own product, but help other people with their health issues [...] ‘Passionate’ is a good word for it.” - Mark Davidson

Growing organic is of the utmost importance for Heritage Farmacy, because it delivers a pure product which is also rare and in high demand in the market. As all inputs of an organic crop must be certified organic, Mark turned to PRO-MIX®, his trusted growing medium supplier, to get his hands on organic substrate, but also on a new product dedicated to medicinal crops: PRO-MIX® CONNECT.

The Advantages of Growing with PRO-MIX® CONNECT 

Mark has used PRO-MIX® BX AGTIV® AMPLIFY™ for 3 years in his greenhouses along with PRO-MIX® MPO AGTIV® REACH™ for his organic crops, such as hemp. He met with his local PRO-MIX® representative and they started discussing the hemp pilot program, going through the second year of testing in 2020. That’s when he discovered PRO-MIX® CONNECT, a highly-concentrated powder mycorrhizal inoculant adapted to hemp and medicinal crops.

Curious, Mark decided to give it a try, organizing a demonstration on his hemp plot, with control rows vs. treated rows of hemp clones. In what he describes as an “easy-breezy” process, workers dipped clones’ roots into PRO-MIX® CONNECT right before transplantation in the field. A meticulous overwatch of the demonstration was done by Mark and his PRO-MIX® representative. Observed results throughout the process and after harvest were simply stunning:

• 20% decrease in plant mortality
• 68% yield increase in dried flower weight
• 3.9% increase in total CBD

The grower also observed a real difference in plant size, leaf color and overall quality and vigor of the treated plants. A difference that just became more and more evident as weeks went by. “A child could have seen the difference”, says Mark.

Looking Forward to Next Hemp Growing Season

Focusing on his next season, Heritage Farmacy announced it will exclusively use PRO-MIX® CONNECT as a mycorrhizal inoculant for all medicinal hemp production. Mark is satisfied with the increased yield, but also on the improved quality of his crop. He can now focus on bringing the best possible product on the market.

Producing medicinal hemp is about more than yield. “The feedback that we are getting, we are literally changing lives. Just as my life was changed. It's just really gratifying.”

In 2020, Heritage Farmacy took home three awards:

• #1 Full Spectrum CBD Tincture in Indiana
• #1 Hemp Flower in Indiana
• #1 Branded Hemp Flower in Indiana

This is the beginning of a great adventure!