High in a Hemlock

I took 1ft^3 organic soil and wrapped it up in a 2 black industrial contracter bags. Then I secured it at the top of a 50ft Eastern Hemlock (Image 1). I took seeds from a hermi bag I bought (image 2) and germated them in a mixture of water & organic menopause capsules. I read somewhere that this can help promote females and figured either way it was a safe bet. I took 6 of the germinated seeds and placed them in the kitchen window to grow. On 4/20 I thought it was only appropriate that I move one of my plants outside. Sadly it was too young of a plant (image 3) and it dropped below freezing several times throughout the rest of April. Fortuately I had five spares in the window still. I moved another one out there a week ago and other than some initial wind damage that was resolved with a forked stick things seem to be going pretty well. Hopefully the hole I cut in the bags is big enough to allow sufficient rain water gathering. It rained all day yesterday and as of this morning everything seems to be doing fine (image 4).

Image 1: The hemp is wrapped around the bag to keep the soil compact. The green cable is attatching the bag to the tree.

Image 2: The leaf looking thing in the upper right is a hollow crystaly shell from which i removed one of the seeds


Image 3: This is the one that was too small and died


Image 4: The brown fuzzy thing on the stick is a pipe cleaner. I was thinking that it would be a better method of attatchment than rope because it is less abrasive for the plant to rub up on during heavy winds.

 

Thanks for the positive support dude! I stabbed a bunch of holes in the bottom of the bag with my pocket knife before a storm hit the other day. Hopefully that'll allow enough drainage while still retaining some water. I was thinking about rocking a bamboo stick for support, but I was also considering using string and attatching it from 3 separate directions to 3 trimmed branchs that had been growing up and around my plant. The bamboo does seems like a safer call though.

 

Yesterday I went out to give her some water and smoke a little tree in my tree and I couldn't help but notice these small yellow spots on some of my leaves. Any clue whats up with them? I know this part of this post should be in another section of the forum, but Im not really worried about it enough to start a new thread. So heres what we're dealing with.



Here's a better arial view of my set up. All of the dead sticks around it were hemlock branches that I had trimmed and wrapped around my bag to kinda camouflage it until all of the deciduous trees around my spot filled in. There are some red oak, beach, and birch trees surrounding my tree and some of the oaks have over hanging branches 15ftish above my plant that are putting it in a more partial sunlight than direct sunlight for parts of the day. I can see how this is gonna be a problem, but im not sure it would be possible for me to bring in the tools necessary to trim them while still maintaining my stealth status. My tree is about 100m off of a trail in a fairly popular 400 acre park. At this point it would be really difficult to move it all to another tree.


It's been cloudy-ish for a couple days, but once it's sunny I'll try and get a picture up of the oak leaf cover thats grown in above my hemlock. I guess I could calculate the leaf area index for that section of the oak canopy and then get down to the science of exactly how much solar radiation my baby really gets. That'll be an interesting bit of info to have.

 

It'll be pointless to get the leaf area index its clear she's not getting enough sun. I was just out there again and it's got a pretty thick canopy above it. On a positive note though i dont think those sun blocking/hogging leaves are gonna get much bigger they seem pretty fully developed. Which brings me to Plan 2

Step 1: research how to maximize growth potential in a shaded environment
Step 2: obtain a pole saw and a head lamp
Step 3: go trim some trees late at night covert-ops style.

the only risk I can see in this other than falling out of the tree (which is the least of my worries) is that the branches im trimming might fall on and mess up my plant.

There was this cool spider up there that seemed to be mimicking the color of my plant. It was exactly the same shade of green as the weed and didnt really blend in on the hemlock leaves or with the color of any of the other tree leaves. Sadly i didn't bring my camera out this trip.

 

So today I lined the top of my bag with tin foil to try and reflect some of the light, I got rid of the little stick and hooked it up with a nice bamboo support, and I bought some nitrogen fertilizer. I also took a ton of sticks and disguised my bag some more to look like big ass bird's nest. Tomorrow I'm getting a pole saw so I'll post some pics of the new set up as well as a before and after of my canopy trim job. I'm gonna go out there with a head lamp tomorrow night. Until then heres the fert I got today.

 

Thanks Dankohzee! I smoked some bud from a friend of a friend who grew it in a white pine last year and I knew I had to do it this summer. I was so stoked to see the other tree grow journal on grass-city its actually the reason I chose to join this forum over others. This time around is kind of a learning process. Hopefully, next year I'll be able to find a less urban setting and get 5 or 6 going up in a tree. The ground is just as effective, but I'm so down for the climb.

 

Newly added tin foil and bamboo support. Still sticking with the pipe cleaners as an attachment method. They're just easier to attach than tying a bunch of little knots at the top of a windy tree. Hopefully the tinfoil will help a little. I also added my first bit of fertilizer today so hopefully she'll start taking off and getting huuuge!!



The "turn a cubic foot of soil into a bird's nest" process is gonna take a while considering what a pain it is to carry sticks up and down that tree. I would take them from the tree I'm growing in, but I don't want to loose any branches that might be already helping hide my plant. I guess just each time I go up there I'm gonna bring a backpack full of sticks that I'll have gathered on each hike out there.

The spray bottle at the bottom is full of piss I just hang it there when I'm checking on my plant, but I keep it buried under a log on the ground when I'm not up there. I haven't seen any signs of squirrels or birds being up there so it seems the urine is working. There are a alot of ants up living in parts of my tree. Can/would they harm my plant?

Heres an arial as well.

 

Successful stealth night-time tree branch trimage. I used a head lamp to follow the trail to my tree then climbed up to the top and got the saw set on the branch I wanted to trim. Then I turned off my head lamp and sawed in the dark until I saw the silhouette of my branch fall from the sky. It was way hot tonight so I was barefoot and shirtless swetting my balls off. I had to turn my lamp on to move my pole saw to the next branches I was trimming, but kept it off while I was sawing because it was sooo buggy. It was such an amazing primal experience to be almost nude in the pitch black 50ft up in the canopy by yourself. There were a ton of fire flys all over the surrounding trees and after my eyes adjusted to the dark I counted 10-15 bats swooping around me too. My favorite part of all of it was taking breaks between sawing (Which was really physically demanding). Each break in the dark I closed my eyes and felt the breeze blow me and the surrounding trees around. It was so quiet I could hear the 3 steams surrounding my tree and I could even hear the flutter of the bat wings. Each of the branches I trimmed were 5-6 inches in diameter and with a very shitty dull old pole saw each took about an hour to cut through. The worst was that they were just barely in reach of my saw when it was extended all the way so i had to like straddle/lay facing out on one of the branches and then reach as far as i could with the pole to do my cutting. The trimmed branches are currently hung up in the branches of my hemlock now and I need to go back with some rope sometime and pull them out. I wanna get them at least 300 feet away from my tree so as not to arouse suspicion from any adventurous dog walkers who might treck off the marked paths. I forgot to take a before shot of the canopy, but rest assured I just doubled to tripled my access to direct sunlight. Bring on the growth and let the sun shine!!

 

Thanks firehose! I'm having such a good time with every step of this process. I'm too impatient though for only an outdoor crop and enjoy this way way too much. Decided today that i'm starting a cabinet grow as soon as its a financially viable option for me. I got sucked into your thread and then spent 7 hoursish smoking and reading almost every GC grow journal and tip forum. What a great knowledge bank.

The park i'm growing in has areas on the other side of it with real high people traffic and homeless people camp out there when the weathers good so they'd be the first suspects of any fuzz before i was. I was worried about the tin foil at first too, but i've made peace with the slightly added risk of discovery. I'd be able to tell if anyone else had been in my tree and the chances of a helicopter, other than life line flying to the nearest hospital, are slim to none. Its too close to the city and just not a big enough piece of land for anyone to suspect cultivation enough to do fly overs. If i get spooked about someone potentially having been there i might just ditch it. it's only one plant and i've already learned so much from it and joining this forum that in my opinion it's been worth it. At the same time though i'm not that worried about getting caught with one plant. Its decriminalized here and I dont have any prior possession or cultivation charges. It's not like i'd ever want to work for a job that wouldnt hire me because i got caught growing a plant anyway.

 

So it's been a couple weeks since i've been on here. Heres a few pics since the canopy trimming and ferts have been added to the equation. I topped her last week and my 2 new cola's seem to be coming in alright.

It's hard to get a side profile because of the whole being in a tree thing, but heres an arial. She's between 1.5 - 2 feet tall as of this morning.

 

So I started super cropping today. I wish I would have LST'd it but oh well. Pretty much I grabbed the main cola 2 or 3 nodes down from the top. Pinched around the edges, and bent her west. I was thinking west was the best choice because the sun rises in the east and I wanted to expose the lower guys to the early morning light. I tied the bent over part to another bamboo stick and am gonna let it recuperate for a couple days before I give it any more bends. I'll try and get some pics up once my camera is charged.

 

i'm worried i could have done it wrong. Is there really a way to mess up a super crop though? I mean it's all stress training right?

 

hahah thanks jugoth. anyone could handle a tree grow, you'd be surprised how easy the climb gets once you do it 100 times or so.

so I was worried for nothing I forgot how resilient these babies are. When I went out there to check on her 6 hours after I bent her over and she was already leaning back up towards the sun. You can't really see it in this picture but my two new cola's are looking good. I'm having a real hard time getting focused pictures because the tree is always swaying and so is my plant.


figured out how to get my pics a little smaller

 

i did my third watering with the bat guano today and found spider egg sacks on the bottom of 2 leaves. i couldn't find any signs of insects eating anything, but it was still alarming. i'm headed to paris farmers union tomorrow some neem oil is on the menu.