Had to harvest like a maniac today because we have had the first real snowfall last night. Left this LA Woman because she wasn't near ready, but the other ones turned out okay

Today I took a hike upto spot 1 to check on my ladies. The tallest one is now 1.80 meters and the smallest one 1.50 meters. They look pretty okay considering the bad weather we've had.

I've cut off some of the lower branches and did some clean up of excessive wild growth round the stems of the plants. Now they have plenty of space to grow again, the rain can reach the soil again and the plants can focus on making nice buds on the top branches. Now let's hope for an awesome sunny autumn with moderate rainfall.

How I found Spot 1 today

After I did some maintenance on the plants

After weeks and weeks of nothing but heavy rainfall the weather had finally cleared up for a few days. So today I decided to make a checkup round to all my 3 spots. Because of the nasty weather I've only planted the last 4 a little over a week ago.

Well... what can I say? I would be lying if I was 100% satisfied with how it is going. There is ample room for improvement. This is only a valuable blog if I tell you guys the truth. And not make it sound better than it is.

Spot 1:

This one is the earliest planted and is actually going pretty okay. These are at the highest altitude (5500ft) and have been planted in a time where it was hot in the day and light rain at night. They had the best start of all 3 spots. There are some brown leafs and some insect and / or deer damage, but overall they have grown to a height of about 70cm and are getting nice and bushy. The funny thing is that the brown leafs also occur on the (normal) plant that is growing next to them. But what it is? Personally I think it's the ridiculous amounts of mountain rain that has fallen over the last weeks. But the top leafs look fine, so I have good hope for them. Also, the LA Woman and the OG18 seem to have the hardest time. The Silver Bubble's are doing the best at this spot and the Sharksbreath and the Purple Wreck are also coping pretty okay it seems.

Spot 2:

These have hardly grown at all since I've planted them. Also here is some insect and / or deer damage, there was even an obvious hoof print next to one of the plants. But they still seem pretty healthy. The deer just seem to nibble at them and then leave them be. These were planted in the week when the rains started and haven't gotten much sun because of it. They have basically only had massive amounts of punishing rains and overcast skies. Still have hope for these also though if the weather would help a bit in the next weeks. (These grow at 4500ft)

Spot 3:

These 4 plants seem to have it the hardest. They were planted a little over a week ago in the middle of the rain period. I wanted to plant them earlier but couldn't because of the rain and had to plant them eventually because it was getting too late in the season. They don't seem all that healthy. 2 of them have some leafs with no green in them at all anymore, pale white. And the overall look of them is a little sad. Also here is some insect and / or deer damage, there was also an obvious hoof print next to one of the plants here. Hope they will still kick off if the sun comes back, but would not be surprised if at least some here won't make it. (These grow at 4000ft)

We have had some rainy weather the past weeks and so it wasn't really save to go up the mountains, but the weather has cleared and so we've continued the planting. I was able to get a pickaxe from a buddy, so I could finally start digging holes for the plants. Also dug holes for the 1st spot where I had the 'growing' bags and that looks so much better (read more inconspicuous) than before.

Tomorrow or the day after the last 5 ladies will go to their spot in the forest also. And then I'm so happy that the planting is over and done with. Because carrying almost 600 liters of soil + water and other stuff up a mountain..... well lets keep it at...... I lost a few pounds doing that

Gave 3 ladies to friends so they could have a little growing fun also, so have 15 left for myself now.

Spot nr. 2 - (5 ladies - outside since June 27th)

Spot nr. 1 with holes dug and growing bags removed - (6 ladies- outside since June 14th)

Today was the first day of 'planting'. I had to make some alterations to my plan. Firstly, it turned out that the soil is so tough and hard here that without a pickaxe there's no getting in there easily. So I had to resort to using growing bags filled with soil. And secondly, I changed my original plan of having 6 spot with 3 plants to 3 spots with 6 plants. Otherwise it is just way too much work to get it all up the mountain in the next week.

The 3 spots I have chosen now can partly be reached by car (over a terrible road, only meant for off-road vehicles). That way I don't have to carry all the gear all the way up the mountain, but only have to walk the final stretch.

On the pictures you can still see the grey of the bags, but before I left I totally covered them up with tall grass and nature will take care of the rest of the camouflaging.

This batch of the first 6 ladies will have to fend for themselves now. I won't be back for a while here now. Will be a nice surprise to see them again in a few weeks. Will they still be there? Will they have been eaten by deer? Will they have grown? But hey, that's all in the game when you try to grow outside in mother nature. Let's just hope for the best!

(Notice the dog hairs that I placed on the branches of bushes all around the plants!)

Of course there are many animals and critters in a forest. When reading up on those things I found out that more Guerrilla Grow's are destroyed by deer for example than by the police. So when investing time and money in a Growing Project it is also very important to think of a means to repel these creatures.

I don't want to put up any fencing. That's way too conspicuous and would turn a Grow that is meant to be hidden in something easily spotted by hikers and others.

So I need to use more natural ways that hopefully will scare them enough, so that they will leave my patches be.

To repel slugs I will add biological slug pellets (that can be safely used for fruit and vegetable gardens) around each plant.

To repel insects I will spray with a biological insecticide that can be safely used for fruit and vegetable gardens .

To repel deer I will put a bar of smelly soap in the middle of the plants, scatter some dog and cat hair around (that I collected from my pets) and spray the area with a home-made spray of garlic, raw eggs, cayenne pepper and water.

All those things combined should give deer the sense of human and/or non forest animal presence and should repel them from my growing spots (in theory that is of course!)

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.

Because there are no Grow Shops where I live you kinda have to make do with what you can get at Garden Centers. But as long as you use a premium quality fertilized potting soil with Perlite added that has the right PH, you're gonna be alright!

The soil mix that each plants gets consists of:

30 liter Premium Quality Fertilized Potting Soil with Perlite and a Root Complex added

1,3 liter Worm Castings

3,3 liter Vermiculite

25 gram Bone Meal (Ground up Cow Horns)

25 gram Blaukorn (Bluekorn)

55 gram (Bat) Guano Kalong

60 gram Sea Bird Guano

I will add the extra fertilizers when I'm filling up the holes to ensure that it is spread evenly thru the mix.

The purpose of vermiculite in a potting mix is to hold water. Vermiculite has crevices which hold and release nutrients and water. Vermiculite and Perlite are both volcanic rock and can be used in an organic garden.

The Soil Mix:

Potting Soil

Worm Castings

Vermiculite

Potting Soil, Worm Castings & Vermiculite together

Potting Soil, Worm Castings & Vermiculite mixed

Make sure you get out all the lumps and make it nice and loose

The Extra Fertilizers:

Bone Meal (Ground up Cow Horns)

Blaukorn (Bluekorn)

Guano Kalong

Sea Bird Guano

Soil Mix & Extra Fertilizers (to be added when filling the holes)

No Grow project is complete without a trip to a Garden Center (or Grow Shop). This week I bought most of the stuff I need, the rest came via the Internet.

I have everything I need now to put together my soil mix for the plants. In the next post I will exactly tell and show you what my mix contains and show you how it's put together.

(Am really NOT looking forward to carrying all this stuff up mountainsides, but you got to do some work to reek the benefits I guess!)

While planning for my Grow Project, I had one issue that kept bugging me. How was I going to know which plant was exactly what strain when harvesting?

Make a precise map? Place one of those white plastic gardening tags? Burry something in the ground? Tie something around the stalk? All fell short because of the obvious downsides to each of these 'solutions'. It gets lost, blown away, is too tight around the stalk for normal growing, etc. etc.

Then when searching our basement for an inventive solution, it came to me! My wife uses elastic colored hair bands to tie up the manes of our horses, those could do the trick!

You can easily shove them over the cup and onto the stalk when planting and no matter how thick the stalk 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.

I have made some pictures to show you the general idea of it:

I also started a seperate topic for this idea: http://www.strainhun...3698#entry53698

I still had a bunch of seeds from great strains left from my previous Dutch Attic Grow-op. Most of them I know and have already grown before. But the 'Sharksbreath' and the 'Purple Wreck' are new to me.

All come from DNA Genetics (am almost ashamed to admit that here), but due to some good connections, I kinda have easy (read free) access to DNA Seeds, so that makes the choice a whole lot easier of course.

Personally I can smoke Silver Bubble all day, but the L.A. and the OG18 are big hitters and gorgeous plants. Especially the OG18 is an amazing plant with white hard big buds and a great sour smell and taste.

(Not to trump my own horn, but B-Real from Cypress Hill was a huge fan of my OG18! Below I've added a picture of my final indoor OG18 Grow.)

The 5 strains I went with are:

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)

The plants are being fed, 'GHE One Part - Total Grow', every 3 days now before they go outside in the soil mix that I will make.

The 18 Germinated Plants in the Austrian Sun

Color Coded Ladies

Branches and Nodes

GHE One Part - Total Grow

My final indoor OG18 Grow

About a year ago we moved from Amsterdam to a gorgeous little mountain village somewhere in the Austrian Alps. I'd always dreamt of living in the mountains and last year we finally decided to just go for it and take the big step of emigrating! 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 Guerrilla Mountain Grow.

In this Blog I will try to keep you updated about all that goes on with the grow, I will explain what products and seeds I used, how I plan to repel all kinds of unwanted animals and critters, how I created my soil mix, etc. etc.

I have almost 20 years of growing experience. Indoor as well as outdoor. I will try to do my best to share my knowledge with you, but feel free to leave a comment if you know it better or do it some other way. (we are never too old to learn!) Of course you can also leave comments on a more positive note, heheh

I had already started the topic: http://www.strainhun...e-european-alps, but thought that a Blog would be so much clearer.

I hope you'll appreciate my effort!

Greetz, DutchGrower420