Growing in the Trees

Hey guys... I think I tried posting a Q about this like a year ago.. guess it's long enough ago to try and ask again...

We have a wicked deer problem in my area so it's something I'm considering for the springtime.

I've heard/read about a technique of growing your outdoor crop up in the tree canopy to avoid being found by deer, hunters, thieves, cops, wabbits, blah blah.

Couple different methods mentioned...

1) 5 gallon pails just hanging from a pulley, tied off discreetly out of plain sight. Grower just lets them down for watering and hoists them back up after.

2) Build platform in tree (seems kind of time consuming!!!). Grower climbs tree to care for plants.

Has anyone else hear dof this?

Better yet, do any of you do this?

???

If so... I want pics!!!!

I don't know about growing in the trees...lets talk about growin trees...

I think you would need some isolated trees.

I would camo the pots with leavs from the tree and some branches or something. But really, how suspicious to see a grown woman climbing a tree every couple of days. maybe im high.

i've been planing to do some thing similer but on a some roof.
i think it's a good idea as long as it near your home

I think I'd spray the pails with camo and do the pulley thing so I'd only have to climb the tree once at most... maybe even not at all if I could chuck a leader line over a branch.

yeah, when i was a kid i fell out of one and did nerve damage to my hand. There just happened to be a broken bottle (glass) right where i was falling where i put my hand to try and break the fall. It sliced up the whole underside of my wrist.

But yeah, do you live on a lot of land? Isolated trees?

I would watch out growning on my roof. At least in San Diego, it would look real strange to all the police choppers that fly over to see a large green plant on a roof. I tried when I was a kid. I just put it near the chimeny in hopes it wouldn't be seen.

Roofs are HOT... they can reach up over 120 degrees F in summer.
I have a safe access to some logging land a couple towns over that has a couple swamps on it... was thinking of doing this in the swamp where the forester probably doesn't spend much time.

ha ha ha ha, i just read my post and it sound like i did a lot of stupid stuff as a kid. Hahaha, im just glad i did it then and not now.

Swamp sounds good. I wonder if the humidity around there is high (to high)?? My friend lives near the beach and he grows. He has had issues with bud rot because of the high humidity there. Or maybe he just sucks.??

He should find a windier spot to place his plants then.
Only thing is that salt spray can do a number on annuals. And the soil is often so harsh that he might be having issues with K being locked out and the plant just not resisting rot properly.

he uses FF ocean forest soil. and FF nutes, i think maybe the salt..

Invisible Marijuana and Psychedelic Mushroom Gardens
by Robert Bunch

Talks about growing in trees in Depth. It is a nice book on growing weed.

Good Luck

hey stinky, i was just recently looking for a nice tree to plant on come summer time, its a really nice oak tree on top of a hill in the woods....it branches out alot so i can probably put about 5-7 plants at once. What i planned to do was find some crates behind a grocery store( the black boxes with a bunch of holes in it) and level them in a tree and put a camo buckets with plant in it. I imagine since my climate gets very hot that i will atleast have to water them once everyother day......if anybody has any other suggestions on how to make it a better set up please let me know.

Hmmm... I've been trying to think of an inconspicuios way to accomplish that, would the canopy of a tree not block the light needed for the plant(too shady). How good can a 5 gallon bucket be camo'd where it dont look odd. Maybe look into products made to repel animials, ultrasonic emitters or something. Or fencing off an area or putting up one of those large dog pens. Just a few ideas.

Hey Jorge Cervantes book "Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible", has a section in it about growing in trees. It's a pretty cool book- worth buying for sure.

I wouldn't personally wanna have to climb a tree everytime I wanted to look after my plants though. I doubt my bf would either, he fell out of a tree when he was 10, ruptured his splein (almost died), and broke both of his arms. Not a good experience to say the least. lol.

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Originally Posted by keeko

hey stinky, i was just recently looking for a nice tree to plant on come summer time, its a really nice oak tree on top of a hill in the woods....it branches out alot so i can probably put about 5-7 plants at once. What i planned to do was find some crates behind a grocery store( the black boxes with a bunch of holes in it) and level them in a tree and put a camo buckets with plant in it. I imagine since my climate gets very hot that i will atleast have to water them once everyother day......if anybody has any other suggestions on how to make it a better set up please let me know.

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You might want to look into auto-watering pots and maybe some water crystals that hold water and release it over time as the plant needs it. Google those.

water crystals are an absolute MUST for outdoor growing. they most deffinitely help, especially in dry hot climates...

splifted, i have looked into those water crystal idea and found it would be the perfect thing to have when im having a bunch of differnt plots and dont have time to go to them each day.:thumbsup:

you can try to repel the deer with the conventional methods. Get a couple of bags of hair from a beauty salon and keep it spread under the plants. If you have a zoo nearby you can ask for big cat skat to spread around your plants. Probably easier to get the catamount turds than fool with the bucket in a tree imo.

Shov

Where I live their are too many hunters to try an aireal garden. all squirrel hunters scan the canopy, sounds too conspicous to me- creating chemical barriers for deer can be easy- there are many ways without tainting your garden soil, I have found human hair to be an excellant mammal repelant- I go to my barber collect all the hair he has put into panty hose and distribute around my garden- have not had deer in my plants for 25 years now

I remember I think it was in a High Times from like 15 years ago or something I had read about this guy that was growing up in the trees using a wick system for watering, sounds kind of crazy to me, i would think gravity would impede the flow of water going up the wick

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Originally Posted by VOYAGER

would the canopy of a tree not block the light needed for the plant(too shady).

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Yeah, that's the only obstacle I haven't figured out how to overcome yet. You could prune some branches to allow light in, but that's just going to make your weed stand out to helicopters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clovisman

Where I live their are too many hunters to try an aireal garden. all squirrel hunters scan the canopy, sounds too conspicous to me- creating chemical barriers for deer can be easy- there are many ways without tainting your garden soil, I have found human hair to be an excellant mammal repelant- I go to my barber collect all the hair he has put into panty hose and distribute around my garden- have not had deer in my plants for 25 years now

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Lol, sorry, but that would make a sweet reality tv show "The Squirrel Hunter" lol. :yippee:

A while ago I remember them finding the remains of a treetop grow in Central Park, NY. Park officials noticed that a number of trees were dying off and they went to investigate. They found that the dead trees contained a bunch of 5gal pails wired to the treetrunks. They were obviously there a while because the trees had grown too big for the wire and were choking themselves off. They figured the grow had been going on for some 15 years or so.

Anyone else remember this?

haha that would be so cool:jointsmile:



fun for the whole family...get up there boy:jointsmile:

lol....the yeag, that picture is great

Yeag, is that a SUper Soaker?
:D

yeah a super soaker full of fish emulsion a little superthrive and some secret x and high quality h20

hahaha
hey yeag, I'm posting a couple pics of your lil girlies in my grow log pretty soon! I just have to get them off the digicam... gimme 5 minutes...

ok i will go take a pic of one of yours i am proud of her three and a half weeks old and only 15'' tall and 12 ''around with a 1'' round stock

One of my friends at home did this, he chained a board at the top of one of his redwood trees and put about 6-8 plants up there. He kept jugs of water up there and climbed the tree every 2-3 days to water them and take care of them. One of the sweetest buds I've ever smoked :rastasmoke:

We planned on screwing some of our pots on fallen trees for next years outdoor grow. Too many pot-loving rabbits in the forest these days. Growing in the trees is a great idea :jointsmile:

You wanna cover your pots with leaf and sticks and other debri so from the ground they look like squirrel nests. Then secure your pot or bucket with a semi mature plant already in it in the tree. The sun is very strong at the canopy like this and a young seddling or clone will burn up! Attatch some black vinyl tubing to the bucket at the soil surface for feeding and run the rest of the tubing all the way down the tree to the base of the trunk, you can camoflauge the tubing with vines. Then all you need is a battery powered water pump capable of moving water x amount of feet straight up and some good nutrients and your in business!
Ive actually heard of people postioning multiple buckets on branches below the top bucket and using the runoff from the top bucket to down to the buckets below thru a hose that comes out of a hole drilled in the bottom of each bucket.
Either way using a pump to feed is going to make tree top gardening a helluva lot easier and safer since your cutting down on all those climbing trips! And if ya think about it you never hear about cops busting tree top gardens either! Ive never heard of it happening.

My friends brother grows in the trees in Kentucky on his private land. He uses grow bags that are specially made for it. They are camod with tree leave and branch print with anchor points for attaching and hoisting. He also uses a fallen tree to hide brown tubing that runs all the way up that he uses a pump to water from ground level. The pump was a simple 5 dollar hand pump he got from the auto parts store. All his supplies are stored in a water proof case inside the fallen tree. Only saw it once but it was stealth as shit. He had buckets set up to collect fallen leaves and acorns and made his own soil with it and used organic nutes. Was the first time I ever saw someone growing weed before. Was some sweet purple bud that knocked me on my ass!

Wish I had pics...

Oh ya... I also grew some outdoors on the edge of a field and heavy woods. This area has a large population of deer which i saw every morning that i checked on them. All I did was take lots of water and drink..wait..rolled one :D ...and pissed a perimeter around the grow site. Not one single bite out of the many plants. Even saw deer grazing within 25-30 yards of them before.

I'm concerned about light. Will your trees be too full of their own leaves and block valuable sunlight? I wonder how tall these light deficient plants would become? Plants have a tendency to stretch up and bend towards open canopy so I would have to wonder what your plants would look like as they tried to find open sunlight. Maybe the reduction in light isn't anything to concern yourself with...I'm no expert, just trying to find your solution.

Camouflage would definitely be the thing to have as well. People aren't stupid, their eyes can spot anything out of the ordinary, so if you do too much to your setup, like build a platform or something then it will only draw more attention especially if your using something like a home depot orange bucket. You already mentioned camo on the buckets though, so your thinking in the right direction.

Would it even be worth the effort in trying to do this in anything short of a forest? I mean if you had say 10 pecan trees on your land or something, I cant see you getting away with this, as there just isn't enough surrounding growth to distract the eye from your grow. This would have to be done in a highly overgrown and unused tract of land.

what we do here is put plants on our deer stands and or in the blinds set up in the canopy of evergreens... better color to match the plants :)
you have to trim a couple branches that would block the sun from above but no big deal if you take some of those branches paint the bucket dark green and then put the branch onto the bucket and spray over.. do with different shades of green and once or twice with brown.. in case anyone does not know how to camo something.. sorry if you do it kinda sucks doing a camo paint job to a truck...
-J