Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible

these trips count; plan ahead.
    Prevent the style, size, and sole pattern of your shoes from leaving discernible tracks that could lead thieves and cops to your patch. Your shoe print could be used as evidence against you if your patch is busted!
    Camouflage plants by bending, pruning, or splitting the stem down the middle. Bending branches is the least traumatic and has more subtle effects on hormones, liquid flow, and physical shape. See “Pruning and Bending” in Chapter Three. You can split the main stem (and the plant) down the middle and stretch the halves horizontally to create an espalier. Pruning produces the strongest effect because it removes the high concentrations of hormones in the terminal buds and stimulates lateral growth. Pruning several main stems may make the plants less obvious but does not improve harvest. Think carefully about desired outcome before cutting.
    Grow in sticker bushes or other unpleasant foliage such as poison oak, poison ivy, stinging nettles, etc, to discourage intruders. Look for bushes that are dense and high enough to shelter the patch from view. This deters large animals or people from wandering into the site. Protect yourself from these plants with a slick rain suit and gloves. Wash after each visit to remove irritating toxic oils and thorns.
    Some growers plant where there are a lot of mosquitos or wasps, and at least one grower I know plants near a skunk’s den. The pungent spray keeps people and animals at bay.
    Some growers climb 30 feet or higher up into the trees to plant on stands in the canopy or use deer and elk stands as growing platforms.
    Set up a pulley system to lift large containers and potting soil up to the platform. Install an irrigation hose from the base of the tree up to the planting area and arrange around the pots so you can perform weekly watering with a battery powered pump rather than climbing the tree. Find a partner to stand lookout when you are working in the canopy, and be sure to use safety lines. Do not overextend yourself. I used to climb trees for a living, and my hard and fast rule was to spend no more than four hours climbing per day. When you get tired, accidents happen. If you hurt yourself, you will not be able to care for your plants!
Drought Growing
    If you do not have access to a water source, dry land crops are possible if the area gets at least one good rain every one to four weeks.
    In general, sativa strains have a bigger root system than indica strains and are more drought resistant.
    Plants pull water and nutrients from the soil. Acceptable soil will hold one inch (3 cm) of water per one square foot (30 cm 2 ) of area and grow a plant seven- to eight-feet (2.1 to 2.4 m) tall with roots five feet (1.5 m) across and six feet (1.8 m) deep. Insufficient water results in small buds. A five-foot (1.5 m) plant may produce only one to six ounces (30-180 gm) of smokable bud. By contrast, a plant in good soil with ample water will be more robust and yield two to ten times more than those in poor soil, making attention to soil and water quality essential.
    An easy, inexpensive way to feed and water your plants is to cut a 3/16-inch (5 mm) hole in the bottom of a five-gallon (19 L) bucket and fill with water and water-soluble fertilizer. Place one bucket by each plant with the hole oriented near the stem. Buckets should be refilled every ten days during the hottest weather. You will be able to get through the summer with as few as four to six buckets of water. This is very inexpensive and the extra water and nutrients will really pay off when it is time to harvest.

Rig up a backpack so that it is easy to carry many clones.

Remove the lower leaves on spindly seedlings and plant deep.

This seedling will develop roots along the subterranean stem in a few weeks.

Remove male plants as soon as they are distinguished.

Beautiful outdoor harvest is drying in a remote concrete pump house.

Beautiful Spanish guerilla garden is close to harvest.
Planting and Maintenance
    Start clones in rockwool, Jiffy, or soilless grow cubes for three weeks, and then transplant into four-inch (10 cm) pots of organic soil mix. Water transplants heavily to encourage root growth. Grow under an HID or CF lamp for two weeks. Harden-off before moving outside into the garden or secret garden.
    One grower I know keeps a stream of plants moving from indoors to his outdoor gardens. He plants the first crop of clones in three-gallon (11 L) pots in a greenhouse, hardens