About a year ago we moved to a gorgeous little mountain village somewhere in the European Alps. Unfortunately we moved here to late in the year so I wasn't able do to some planting last season, but I decided there and then that 2012 would be the year of my first mountain grow. Luckily I still had a bunch of seeds from great strains left from my previous Dutch Attic Grow-op: LA Woman OG18 Purple Wreck Sharksbreath Silver Bubble Early April I started germinating all the seeds. Since I don't have any growing equipment here I had to make my own propagators from 1 white and 1 clear drink cup that I taped on top of each other with a drainage hole in the bottom and some air holes in the top cup. For light I just used the sunlight in the windowsill. That worked better than expected actually and they sprouted like good seeds should. From 25 germinated seeds I eventually kept the 18 strongest looking plants. (4 died and 3 just don't want to grow) I have scouted the surrounding mountains and marked a bunch of suitable spots. I plan to plant 3 plants per spot, which will come to 6 spots in total. Since I only want to go back to the spots as few times as possible before harvesting I have to create a soil mix that, given ample rainfall of course, will get the plants thru the growing and blossoming process without adding any additional fertilizers over the coming months. The plants are all color coded with an elastic hair band that I can easily shove over the cup and onto the stalk when planting. That way I will still know which plant is what strain when harvesting. For each plant I will dig about a 35 liter hole. The soil mix that each plants gets consists of: 30 Liters of premium quality fertilized potting mix earth with root complex added Perlite Vermiculite Sea Bird Guano (Bat) Guano Kalong Worm Castings Blaukorn (Bluekorn) Bone Meal To repel slugs I will add slug pellets around each plant. To repel deer I will put a bar of soap in the middle of the 3 plants, scatter some dog and cat hair around and spray the area with a home-made spray of garlic, raw eggs, cayenne pepper and water. Over the next 2 weeks I will start carrying up all the stuff to the various spots, dig the holes and eventually plant all my ladies. With 1 starting load of carried up water they then pretty much have to fend for themselves. As I've said, I won't go back many times, so don't expect any weekly updates. But I will for sure take some more pictures of the planting and I probably can't keep myself from a few picture trips over the season, so stay tuned! All my ladies in the sun! Color coded ladies
Sounds good. I grew out a sharksbreath last year she did well and was a heavy girl. Only issue i had with her was bud rot, but it was I moist fall around here like usual. Good luck.
Really like the idea of using hair bands to identify the plants - great idea. Your plants look really healthy. When I think of the alps, I always thought of skiing and snow. I guess it must be warmer than I thought.
Gave that a lot of thought, how was I going to keep plants identifiable? And after much deliberation, I thought of this 'hair band' system. You can easily shove them over the cup and onto the stalk when planting and no matter how thick that gets, it'll stretch enough to cope with that. Also it can't easily be blown away or anything, is durable enough to last a couple of months of rough weather and you don't need to dig up a (by then of course disappeared) tag when harvesting. LOL bro! Yeah the alps in winter are all about snow and skiing, but in summer, especially here more located towards Italy, it gets pretty damn hot, perfect growing weather even. You just gotta hope winter doesn't set in too soon, because then your f-ed
Well, today we went out to a garden center to buy most of the stuff needed for my Guerilla Grow Project. Really am NOT looking forward to carrying all this stuff up mountainsides, but you got to do some work to reek the benefits. Only stuff that is still missing is the Vermiculite, the Guano Kalong and the Worm Castings. Those I ordered over the Internet and I hope they will arrive any day now.
For those who are really interested in following my Mountain Grow, I will continue this further in my Blog. It is just too much work doing this in more than 1 site Go check it out at: http://www.strainhunters.com/forums/blog/36-2012-guerrilla-mountain-grow/ (You will however have to register at StrainHunters though!)