What a Long Strange Trip it's Been!

Well even though we woke up to snow this morning, Spring is almost here. Spring equinox is just 8 days away. And even though we got snow the spring peepers were chirping away down at the pond this morning. Let Ol' Holler grab another hunk of hickory and toss it on the fire and we'll sit a spell and talk about a couple of more ways to make sure we keep the girls safe this summer.

Raspberry Scrog- Wow! That sounds like a delicious drink doesn't it? But it's not it could just as easily be Honeysuckle scrog or blackberry scrog or multiflora rose scrog. Here is what we do. first before you even plant your plant find a sufficiently large growth of vines you want them to be about 2-3 feet in height and fairly thick. Next we decide about how many plants we can fit into our area. Next and this is the hard part we GI Joe crawl into the thicket from underneath taking a good pair of pruners and carefully pick out where we want our holes for our plants to be. Clear out under growth and I even take a small garden trowel in with me and dig my holes right then. It's tempting to go in from above. It's certainly easier but if you do you will leave trails and tell tail spots. Make some 1-2 feet holes for your yound plants to get established in and cut a path so you can crawl in and out with ease. Now come back amend your soil with your favorite mix and plant your starts. After that its a scrog grow simply tying and tucking your growthe through the existing vines as you would a screen in your room. It works great! I use small pieces of baling twine to tie my girls where I need them to grow and to tie cover plant limbs where I need them to be. This technique makes your plants almost undetectible. i have stood right next to plants that I knew were there and had to look hard to see them. It also somewhat protects your girls from critters.

Plant your own cover- In the midwest common ragweed and giant ragweed and other types of taller growing plants are commonly found but they are not always where we need them to be. I found that if during the fall I gather seeds of Blackeyed susans and even foxtail I can plant cover in the spring at the time and place that I need it to be. I often let my plant get established first then plant my cover crop keeping in mind the direction that i plan to train my plant to grow.

Well our logs burning down and my bride just said she has fried mush ready in the kitchen. So it's time I go down and try some of this years maple syrup and see how we did! You're welcome to stay for breakfast but ,if you can't, make sure you come on back and sit a while. Next time we are going to cover some more plant securing ideas and how you can hide yourself too!

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Hey uptheholler! Cool that you are keeping up the blog! I like the ongoing conversation in here. My family is from up the holler as well as it were. Now I am far from those days in the south and kinda miss it.

Thanks for stopping in my grow. Come by anytime. I will add this to my list of "Must Reads"! Thanks!

ataxian;bt7947 said:

You're living the dream!
We have to grow indoors on the WEST COAST.
It seems the laws are actually stricter than in the 70's?
Or just more enforcement?

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Hey Ataxian! How goes it my friend? I don't think that the laws are any more strict. In fact I think that they are more lax than ever. But enforcement.... that's something else entirely. In the 70's police were much more likely to make you pour out your beer if you were drinking and driving. Or even dump your bag if you were caught with weed. They didn't want to have to do the paperwork to process you for something that minor. They would tell you to get your butt home and they didn't want to catch you back out here tonight. All you have to do is twist one up and watch a couple of episodes of Andy Griffith to see the dramatic change in how drunks were handled. Old Otis Campbell could get drunk and ride a cow into town stumble into jail and lock himself up. Now I know that wasn't reality, BUT, the acceptance of that by the audience WAS a reality. If a modern show took that same avant guarde attitude to public drunkeness every MADD group and spinoff in America would be on the morning shows villifying the show. Our fore fathers consumed absolutely huge quantities of alcohol. The same goes for weed today. Both weed and alcohol makes local governments a tremendous amount of money. To my mind the biggest thing that we have going for us in the decriminalization efforts is the even bigger amount of tax income that states like Colorado are starting to see from legal pot sales. I predict that this will trump all right or wrong arguments and the dollar will prevail. The genie is out of the bottle and just like legal gambling states will star dropping like dominoes to chase the money. That's the opinion form uptheholler!

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Hey Folks! Tonight I had a backwood's epihany . There was an sudden knock at the cabin door ..my 2 spaniels just sat there and stared blankly at each other...That's when it hit me......You know that you are out in the sticks.....when your dogs don't know what a knock on the door means. Because they never hear it. Ha! They just sat there. I just started laughing.....Oh man I entertain easily don't I!

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Beeeaauuutiiifulllllll in the immortale words of Jackey Gleason!

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Hey Ataxian! It looks like one of two things at first glance.

Over fertilized: Often times overfertilizing the plant will cause the type of leaf rolling and tip curl.This would be my first guess. When is the last time you fed her and aht are you giving her on what schedule?

Thrips ,Aphids or other sucking type insects. Even a heavy white fly infestation I guess could eve cause that type of symptom.Check the underside of those curled leaves closely.

Let me know what else you can and we can narrow it down
Based upon what I said in that earlier post she may have too much nitrogen at this stage in her life cycle.
Kind of that "mixed signal" analygy to the tomato plants of my friends. Those flowers still look like they are running on you. Knowing that you have enough light you can rule out that as a cause.

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Well gang, as the Little Feet song went, "you will know that you're over the hill when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill". The outside grow info is very good advice. But, being in my late 50's with a bum knee makes the adventuring a royal pain, no joke. So I'll stick to my little grow room. I did get rid of the spidermites and the girls are healthy now if we could just get some weather above freezing to help out on the heat situation.

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Heck yeah grow her out. Let er Go!

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Hey Folks, I wii be getting back to our spring prep topic here shortly and we'll be talking a little more about our ability to hide our crop. But today I thought that I'd let you know what we have been up to here on the farm. With the unexpected dry spell we decided that we needed to break some ground that we didn't get to in the fall. I love plowing in the spring. The soil turns so nice and when it breaks over and leaves a nice clean furrow it's almost hypnotic. Spring peepers are in full force. We had to haul some more wood , knowing that cold weather isn't over for us yet. We used some of that wood to evaporate still more sap into the syrup! I also got back to work on my new space. I finished up framing and wall board. I only have to run the wirning now insulate and finish out the inside and we are good to go. Its going to be nice having a cloning / vegging space right next to my flowering area. I will be getting back to writing about spring prep soon. Make sure that you come on back and visit!

Good Morning Folks! We're glad that you could make it out to the ridge this morning. Did you remember to latch the gate? Nothing good ever comes from leaving the gate open! Come on in and have sit down and we'll drink a cup of coffee and talk a little more about hiding your crop this year.

Now I don't want to over complicate it basically you need a small patch of ground that nobody is going to come into for about 4 months. One thing I always like to think is in my favor is that about 95% of the people are lazy. Especially the ones out looking for free weed. If they had any gumption they would grow their own but instead they are lazy butts that just want to steal yours. Then you've got the law to consider these next couple of tips can help you there too.

-Use the lay of the land: Even in flat country there are swell and little humps of ground. Now in my neck of the woods we are blessed with big ol hills and deep dark hollers all interlaced with creeks and springs.
I like to find a small depressionat the edge of a south or west facing woods or fenceline. If we can imagine it together, think of a woods that you have to go down a slight slope to get to the edge of.
Now if you put your plants along that edge. the ground swell keeps itfrom being seen from any distance
And the woods or fenceline protects you from that angle. As far as a helicopter is concerned you've cut down his sight angle during a fly over. Remember when it comes to air spotting angles are everything.
If you can lessen the time that any plant can be visible without hovering right over it then you have significantly decreased your plant from being spotted. Remember these boys have alot of ground to cover
and there are alot of careless growers who are living in La La Land if you take reasonable care they will be busy popping the big easy patches.

-Use shadows to you advantage: I tend to use alot of western and eastern exposures in my outdoor grows. I especially like eastern exposures. First the dew dries quicker in the morning which lessens disease and mold problems. If you are backed against a woods or fenceline it can lessen the risk of storm damage. But, what i relly like is the early shadows offered by eastern exposures. By 4 oclock in the afternoon they are already dappled sunlight. This again lessesn the cahnce of discovery both from the ground and the air.

-Logs and Limbs- Logs and limbs are great camoflage tools they can be used to protect plants from prying eyes as well as critters. Early spring is the best time to move around and set up this kind of cover. Once other plants start growing moving logs and limbs can damage surrounding vegetation causing it to wilt and die. Now an old ridge runner like me would get to wondering what caused that kind of disturbance. We don't need that!

Well the Bride is telling me I need to get out and take advantage of this good weather. It's been kind of scarce this year. You can stay and help out with chores or if you can't come on back and we'll talk about hiding yourself in the field and then wrap up this part of our talk with some summary points to consider.
But I gotta go I'm burning daylight!

Well the winds are blowing and Spring sure is taking it's time getting to the farm. I thouhgt that I'd come in from the greenhouse to talk to you a little about hiding yourself. The first rule of a successful outdoor grow is to not visit your plants any more than is absolutely necessary. Every visit can mean a bigger path or signs that you have been there. I try to limit it to no more than 3 time a season. Once about 2-3 weeks after planting for a fertilization , pruning and tie down. Once for a watering in the middle of any dry time. Then a late season sex check and watering bloom enhancing fertilization. That's it the next time I come I'm cutting. If you have been reading the blog you already know that I like to have an excuse for being anywhere that I plant. Whether it's fishing or canoeing or paying my respects at the cemetary. I don't wear alot of camo because most of the time I'm out there on perfectly honest business. However, since law enforcement is absolutely obsessed with trail cams I do carry a camo mask with me in my pocket and put it on when I am within 50 or so yards of my grow. I use the small elastic ones since they are easy to pt in your pocket. Next time we will wrap up this discussion and move on to making your own crosses with the varieties that you grow. Till then get busy!

Our late night place in our illinois town was called "Snappy Service" ...but you all were a bit ahead of me. Didn't try anything until college. And, I went to SIU, too. Vietnam war time. I spent 2 years there and then moved on to U of I, and finally graduated from Eastern Illinois.
Was just in Ill for Thanksgiving: I was cold much of the time and there wasn't even any snow. chuckle. I was quite surprised: an afternoon movie cost 3 bucks!! Hard to believe when it's 12 bucks in CA.
Buen Dia!

uptheholler;bt7538 said:

Ralph for us it was Blue River bridge then a run to the White Castle or the Steak and Shake to watch and laugh at all of the lae night drunks come stumbling in. Ah how i miss those quaint old days in Indiana! Ha!

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