my only experience with it was in horrible poor soil in the beginning stages of converting a hay pasture to a crp / old field look. we sprayed the bahia/fescue/dallis grass after it had greened up , lightly disced and broadcast a mix of hemp, sorghum, egyptian wheat, sunflowers etc. browsed heavily early on and reached 6’ late summer. was bushhogging strips in it and was turning around in a skid steer and i had swung the cutter over an area (blades off) once i got lined up with the shooting house to start the cutter i noticed a pie plate sized section of roots up on its side. very little vertical root system but had branches out 6”ish close to the surface. i could pull up most of the plants i saw after that with the same result but as i mentioned earlier, this had been a pasture for 50+ years and only lightly disced just to get soil contact. my only experience with it as far as seeing the roots.

I would think that would vary greatly with soil type huh? Or no? I'm new to the soil study aspect of food plots.

You are correct in that soils (and actually available H2O) makes a difference in root depth and structure. But, I was trying to get an undersranding where the bulk of the biomass was located. I have planted hemp in well drained soils that have no "hard pan" or fragipan to limit root depth. My guess is roots are getting very deep, but when I pulled a few the tap root must break easier than I thought it would.

Most modern crops have root structure diagrams widely available. I was hoping that hemp had some out there. I was going to try some rough biomass calculations based on what I have above ground. Just trying to quantify how much organic material I am adding per year subsurface... It is a wild estimate that has a bunch of pitfalls, but it will give me something to compare costs to.