Alpine outdoor guerilla grow

[Funkalicious]

Hello to the good people of ICmag. I have finally made an account after a long lurker life here.

I am into my second year of guerilla growing at 47N in the alps. I'd like to share last years grow, and hopefully do a bit of a diary for this season. What is the best way to share within the rules.

Would posting pics from last year, then continuing with this year all within this thread be OK.. Or would that fall into the grow diary forum instead? Thanks for any input! All outdoor that's for certain

Stay Funky!

 

[exploziv]

Welcome to the forum! Good luck with your grow, you can share it as you wish, man, this subforum is good for it, if you want to continue this thread.

 

[therevverend]

Your thread, you make the rules! Sounds like something I'd be interested in. I'm at 47 degrees N as well, I'd like to see how you do it. Pulling off anything in the mountains is tricky. Autos and photo-sensitive strains help a lot. The rain that rolls in at the end of September along with the falling temperatures put a moldy end to most of the high elevation attempts that don't have the early strains. Still, in a sunny year on a south facing slope with a strain that finishes by Oct 1 you could do great stuff.

 

[woolybear]

When I hear the Alps I think of the smoky crystals. Imagine growing some buds in the mountains and picking up some nice rocks along the way

 

[stiff]

Hi, good luck for your outdoor season. Waht strains will u be growing?
Cheers,stiff

 

[44:86N]

Greetings from Northern Michigan, and what are you growing up there on the 47th?

You below treeline?

 

[Funkalicious]

Greetings all, thank you for the enthusiastic response! Delighted to know this grow would be of interest!

I'll do my best to breakdown how we went about the Alpine guerilla last year. Then when I've got something to post about this year (we've barely got started) I will do so!

Background
We found a spot at around 1000 metres altitude that had been logged a couple years prior. A few members of Funkalicious did a test grow last year.. The spot seemed good even without proper site prep. We had to go for a real run last season. Deer did eat a sizable chunk of the crop on the first try, so we had this in mind when starting up.

It's a fairly steep slope, with lots of stumps and thorny brambles growing around. We cut three terraces out of the hillside with pick and shovel. We tried to make the entrance points to the terraces narrow, so we could string them off. This proved effective in fending off deer apart from the plants right at the edge which go nibbled once or twice.. Nothing major! Free topping service. The brambles will eventually build us a thorny fence as they develop.

Planting
We mostly went with purchased clones. Strains were Critical (incl. Critical++ & Critical 2.0), Blue Cheese and Tropicanna Banana.

I got all fired up with this forum, and having fallen in love with Dubi's passion for the art of breeding.. I insisted we try at least one ACE strain. We had a couple seeds including Bangi Haze, Sugar Black Rose and El Alquimistra. This year I got more ACE strains so stay tuned.

The grow
We had some issues with mildew on the Tropicanna clones, perhaps due to our shitty weather last year. This would later delay their maturation. But overall the planting went well. We amended the soil with a store bought soil mix for hemp, perlite, and organic fertiliser. We also added some pellets branded for guerilla growing during the flowering stage, as well as a foliar application fertiliser during the vegetative stage.

We had one of the wettest years in living memory over here, so that came with its own challenges. It meant no hand watering in peak summer...but also a very humid environment when the temperatures started dropping. Probably contributed to the budrot issues. Thankfully we had a dry start to the autumn, thanks pachamama!

Harvest
The Critical started showing signs of botrytis first so it got harvested a little earlier than planned. Then the Blue Cheese was looking great at 8 weeks flowering time. Last was the Tropicanna Banana and the seeds (we lost track of which was which...oops!). We got scared of bud rot spreading fast so I think we cut the Tropicanna a little early but we were happy to have a harvest! Having multiple strains complicated the harvest as we had things maturing at many different times, but it also meant we weren't overwhelmed with material to dry at home. We don't have space for all plants at once!

We ended up with around 1.2 - 1.3 kg dry material. That's not a high yield per plant (30-40g per plant) but that's still a great ROI for us. And then the fun and adventure factor is also a big part of it. We were very happy with this grow and have been enjoying some tasty buds! The cold temperatures and forest soil provide some great flavor and resin. Will be making some extractions soon now that the cure is at 6 months.

Photos forthcoming! Digging thru the folders... Soon soon

PS.. I have to say no smoky quartz lying around so far. But I've seen some deer skulls and plenty of live animals saying hello.

 

[Funkalicious]

Hello all! Finally found the pics from last year. Here is the digging of the terraces in early spring. We used shovel and pickaxe to cut three terraces out of the logged mountainside.. That's why the light and space was already there!

While digging we revealed this salamander! Poor girl, glad we did not hurt her.

 

[Funkalicious]

The next step was planting the array of clones we had. Balcony one was Blue Cheese, Two was Tropicanna Banana, and Three was Critical.

The big batch of green!

All the young girls transplanted

As you can see the planting was quite dense ! We won't do it so crammed in this year.

 

[Funkalicious]

Here is some growth in early July. Approx 3 weeks after the transplanting to the spot. We also planted a few seedlings we started from feminised seeds at this time, either to fill additional spots or to replace the few clones that didn't like the transplant.

Some fertiliser pellets were also added at this stage. A mix supposedly for guerilla! Seemed to have worked fine.

Blue Cheese

Tropicanna Banana

Critical

 

[Funkalicious]

And the sunshine and rain came! Although there was some Powdery Mildew on the Tropicanna Banana.. It was present in the tiny clone stage. We thought we'd eliminated it but it came back!
We had to resort to a treatment spray which isn't ideal at all, but we didn't want to lose the whole terrace to PM.

Mid August growth! Blue Cheese looks happy.

Beginning of September we are getting some buds on the way!

 

[Funkalicious]

Middle of September.. Getting closer!!

Shot of the banana farm:

 

[Funkalicious]

Here's some shots of the Blue Cheese soon before harvest end September. We saw signs of Botrytis coming up for most of the strains, so each got chopped a week or two early I'd say. Blue Cheese was the most mature at harvest.

DSLR budshots ! End september as well.

Critical
View attachment 166A4322.JPG

Critical 2.0
View attachment 166A4325.JPG

We left a few smaller Tropicanna Banana branches to keep going until 2nd + 3rd week October. These got purple and frosty! I feel like they could have gone on longer, shame about the early harvest on the banana but that's budrot for ya.

Topicanna Banana
View attachment 166A4560.JPG

Sorry about the higher resolution pics being attachments, not sure how to change that.

 

[Funkalicious]

Greetings all!

We are a bit late on things this year, but still going ahead on all fronts. Here is a shot of the autoflowering plants we prepared for this year. They were already planted out last week. We initially wanted to plant them out on the mountain spot, but we found another sneaky guerilla spot closer by to test out. I expect they will be ready by the end of the month of June!

For the mountian guerilla spot... we are only just getting our clones delivered this week...as you can see we are cutting it close this year haha!

Here are the auto strains.. nearly all freebies except for the ACE. 19 plants in total!

1. Zamaldelica auto
2. Bruce Banner
3. Cheese XXL
4. Gelato
5. Mandarina
6. Strawberry banana

 

[xet]

Subbed

 

[Funkalicious]

Cheers Xet! We've got our first batch of clones now.

10 Critical
10 Northern lights X White Widow.
.. More to be added!

They are under a grow light for now, until we get ready for a guerilla mission soon!

 

[troutman]

This time plant only 1 row of plants if you can to give them more air circulation.
That should help reduce the Botrytis levels this time around.

 

[Funkalicious]

This time plant only 1 row of plants if you can to give them more air circulation.
That should help reduce the Botrytis levels this time around.

Duly noted! I will pitch this to the Funkalicious crew.. I think it should be an easy sell considering how much nicer life is without Botrytis. Hah!

 

[troutman]

Plants are healthier when nothing including other plants are touching them.

 

[Funkalicious]

Greetings all! We've been up to plant the first batch of clones. First visit of the spot and it looks wonderful up there. A lot more vegetation.. Wild strawberries, and a hum of bees all over the brambles. A wonderful sight!

We planted the Critical on the top balcony, and the NLX (Northern lights x White widow) in the middle. The top bed is much wider this year, I think erosion and weathering helped the freshly dug terraces of last year settle in.

I tried to bring the valuable feedback from @troutman, but seems like the trend was pushing for another dense planting. Thankfully the middle terrace was planted up right down the middle, so I'll use this arrangement to push for keeping this density of planting as it is.

Big job! Hauling the soil plants and the rest was sporty but feels satisfying to get this guerilla season going.

Top, Critical

Middle, NLX

Thanks for tuning in.
Stay Funky