Primate Patch. Or proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

I had been out of the game for 11-12 years, and started to get the itch back last summer. I lost about 10 so-so strains, and three really good ones to a broken freezer while I was on the wagon. I tried some of all of them, but nothing popped. I have a cousin whom I knew did a little growing, so I ask him for a few seeds so I could grow some seeds. He dug around in his freezer and came out with a paper bag that had, "1998 J*** S***** {Northern Lights} Crossed with C**** H**** {Afghan Hybrid} Deer Ate" on the bag. The ziplock inside had about two fingers of shake with a few seeds inside. He gave me about 50 seeds, with the understanding I would give half the sprouts to him, plus a few seeds if I made any. It turned out he had been growing this strain off and on for years without getting a male plant. The few seeds mixed in with the shake was the last of his supply. When I sprouted them, we got about 20 plants each.

I like naming my strains, so I set trying to think of a name. I knew both the growers who's strains my cousin had used to make the cross, and playing {punning} off their last names, I came up with The 2015 Floral Collection. But after I had topped the plants the first time, and did a taste test, I was tempted to change that to Side Track.

Anyway, I put my plants out into the woods, using a quart of triple 13 per plant. I tilted the balance of cover and sun over to the cover side. When I used to grow, the local law used their copter quite often to find patches, so you had to do a really good job of hiding your plants. These days they don't fly that often, {it's a money thing} but I was still in that old mindset. So as a result of not enough sun, my plants were not what you would call big.

And by late summer, when everything was starting to flower, there still wasn't any males. {for me or my cousin} I waited a couple more weeks without seeing any show male. Then looking to turn them with stress, I topped the hell out of almost all my plants. My CP patch was the nicest I had, so I didn't top these 4 plants, but everything else got it. The next week I had 3 males and a couple weeks later, one of the girls changed her name to Herman. Herman only had 1 little cluster of balls, and she was small enough I was able to dig her {?} up and move it far enough away to be safe. I did a taste and smell test on the 3 males, and used the best one to breed with, {including Herman} then gave a little pollen to my cousin. My CP patch was the hardest to get to, so it was a few days before I got to it. Most of my pollen had been used by then, and I didn't put any of what was left on the upper branches.

My other patches were named GV, SOL, SLO and BP. I ended up with 11 females and Herman. They were GV 1, 2, 3 and 4, CP 1, 2, 3 and DA {deer ate}. Once the males and Herman were gone, there was only one plant each in SOL, SLO and BP.

Skip forward to this week. Yesterday I mixed up some of my Darro Dirt to give it plenty of time to cool down by spring. Then I took a long walk in the rain this morning with my nippers and handsaw. {I also had a small bag of corn for the deer. You have to have that back story ready, just in case} I had gone out a couple of weeks ago to scout locations for the 2016 Primate Patches. {No gorillas will be harmed in operation of this garden} I'm near the {very small} county airport, and there is always some sort of aircraft about, so I try to wait for rainy days to do my work.

In this years patch I'm going to be a little braver with the cover sun balance. But I still passed on lots of locations that seemed too open to me. I found a couple of downed trees that had opened up the canopy for sunlight. The sun always causes small trees and bushes to take off. I trimmed a few trees, pulled some back out of the way and cut others to get that south sun. {that is what is good about getting out this time of year} I also like to weave bushes together to help with side viability. I got 3 or 4 spots ready. Because of the bigger trees, 1-2 plants per spot is the best I can do on the woods side.

Then I checked out an area that had been logged 3 or 4 years ago. There are a few trees left, and millions of small bushes, briars, broomstraw and just weeds in general. I got 4 spots ready where I can put 3 plants each. Which is funny, because I had talked myself into growing just 12 plants again this year.

As soon as I have another rainy day, I'll be digging holes and putting in the Darro Dirt.

Got to run. Time to get off work. See ya later,

Larro

Have fun!

We had a couple of rainy days this week, so I got 3 holes dug in last year's SOL patch. In the first two holes I used 2 1/2 gallons of the hot mix Darro Dirt and 5 gallons of the mild. The last hole got 1 bucket of each. You can see how sandy my soil is. Quite the contrast from the Darro Dirt.

Each trip into the woods takes time, so with 21 more holes to go, I'll have to slip off every chance I get. And with several new locations, I will have to be thinking of names for the patches.

Larro

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OLD MOTHER SATIVA said:

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I had an old Chief in the Navy who was fond of saying that, {the 6 P's} when we did less than our best.

The other is from watching too many GG vids on You Tube. Most involve lots of heavily loaded trips into the woods with many colorful bags of potting soil, some of which they leave until another day. In many you will see {and hear} noisy chainsaw operation. And when the plants are ready to transplant, they go into shiny black grow bags, sitting up high so they can catch lots of sunshine and need more water. I do most everything different from the You Tube GG's, so I had to come up with another name for what I do.

Back when I started growing in the late 70's, going deep out into the woods and growing your plants in such a way as to avoid detection was called growing. There were too many country boys, {rippers and LEO} watching the dirt roads and trails. If you were not sneaky, your plants din't make it till harvest. So we learned how to GG before it was a thing.

35 years later there aren't as many busts, but you still have to worry about rippers. So I'll be leaving the chainsaws and bright bags back at the Larro Ranchero, and do my work in the woods with the handsaw and nippers.

Larro




I

I was able to camp for several nights this week, so I got in some hole digging while I was in the woods. I did three holes in last year's CP patch with 1 bucket of hot and 1/2 bucket of base to each. Then did one big hole nearby with 3 buckets of hot and 1 1/2 of base. My thinking going in was to put 3 plants there, but I may do 2 or even 1 just to see what the extra soil and space will do.

Also dug 3 holes by the light of the moon Christmas Eve Eve in a new location I'm calling GB for now. I used a revised mix for my Darro Dirt, mixing equal parts of what I made the other day with an older hot mix {that I can't find my notes on right this minute}, then adding 1 cup 13-13-13 and 1/2 cup time release plant food per bucket of the hot, and cutting it 50/50 with Metro Mix potting soil for the base. I was able to drop off the soil just before dark, so I didn't have a heavily loaded long walk, just a long walk. I used 1 bucket of hot and 2/3 bucket of base per hole.

Then the next night I did 3 more hole in the same area, dropping off the soil just after daylight, and going back to dig the holes after dark. This patch I'm calling LP for now. It was also 1 hot and 2/3 base per hole.

Yesterday I went into another new area. I had planned on 6 holes, but I must have used a little too much soil on the first 4, because when I got to the 5th one, there was only a bucket and a half left. I used the rest of it on the 5th hole. This patch {3DT or DTT} is a little longer walk. I had to carry the soil about half a mile. So it was 6 buckets of the hot mix between the 5 holes with no base.

When starting this early I like to leave the plug of topsoil I take out of the hole intact and put it back in place once I have the hole finished. Like this.



In the spring I will come back in and break it up, get the roots out and mix with the Darro Dirt.

I also bring in a trash can full of leaves so I don't have to be scratching around trying to come up with enough for camo. {Of course when you have a really long walk, that just isn't an option} Here is the 3 holes above with the leaves covering them. Other than the pine needles where there isn't a pine tree, it blends in pretty well.

The locations I scoped out in the logged land is going to be another 1/2 mile past 3DT, so I'm thinking I will do some super hot mix and just put 1/3 bucket per hole. Carrying 2 buckets of soil and a shovel will mean one trip instead of two. I have never grown in such an open area, so it is pretty scary thinking about how exposed I will be checking on them. {with the extra sunshine, they should be big plants, so more to worry about} These six plants will be the least tended to. It is also crazy thick with deer, so I'm not going to put anything I don't have plenty of seeds for. Several of my plants last year had just a few seeds, so the plants from those will go into a safer area.

I went down into the big woods yesterday to scout locations. The cover is so thick you have to find downed trees to get enough light. Luckily there always seems to be new downed trees.

Today I dug three {single} holes near last year's BP patch. I used 1/3 bucket of the Long Walk mix, plus 2 cups of triple 13 per hole. {I don't have my soil mix notes with me, but I'll add those later} These are going to be transplant and forget plants, so I wanted to make sure there was enough food to last the season. There is more of a risk of these getting found, but there is lots of sunlight, so I'll put some GV1, Slo or something else I have lots of seeds from. I had thought about putting BP back there, but there are only three seeds of that, so it will go in a safer place.

It was a clear day, so I hurried through it. I had already picked the spots, so I was in and out in half an hour. Right after I got back to my truck, a plane flew over. Getting lucky is a big part of a good growing season.

I got three holes dug around the fallen tree above. It was too long a walk for even the Long Walk mix of Darro Dirt, so I used 4 cups 13-13-13, and 1 each of three time release plant foods. {I was able to take everything in a big backpack, so only one trip} I left all the leftovers in the woods, so I don't have the numbers off those. I would like to find a spot for three more holes in those woods. Getting in and out is tricky. The land coming in belongs to out of town cousins, but they are into the high end game cameras. These days there isn't even the red flash to warn you if you are being filmed. And they have four or five food plots, so I assume each of them have a camera. I have to pick my way in carefully. Once I get down in the swamp I feel pretty safe. But just in case I am seen, I have been taking my compass and practicing my navigation skills.

Day before yesterday I used my truck to drop off my latest mix of Darro Dirt in a nearby wood thicket. I went back and got one hole dug in last year's SLO patch. Went back yesterday morning and got three more in the same area. These all were five gallons of the mix. I have the soil mix notes in my truck and need to get them posted before I get too far out in front. One of the holes had the perfect sun/cover ratio. Lots of southern exposure, but good cover on the other three sides. Everything about it was good, except for bush growing in the middle and all the big roots I had to cut.



Went back after lunch yesterday and dug three holes in last year's GV patch. Two of those with 2 buckets of mix, and 1 in the last hole. I have cleared out a spot for one more hole, so will bring enough to put them all at 2 each. I had some more spots scoped out for that land, but I think I will stop with the 4th GV hole. Don't want to get greedy.

This is the trail going into the 4th hole. {hands and knees required}



The spot for the hole before I cleared it up. {sorry about the double picture}



Then with a few limbs pulled to the side and a lot of dead grape vines cleared out. I was able to do it without cutting any of the live trees. I may have to do some trimming when I transplant.

Alright, I looked up my soil mix notes. Here is what I used on the SOL patch. I can't remember if I add 13-13-13 and time release plant food when I dug the holes. {I was out when I did the mix} I will have to look at the soil in the holes and try to decide if I need to add it.

20 gal Mushroom Compost
5 gal Peat Moss
1 1/2 gal Black Kow
4 cups Lime
4 cups Coffee Grounds
2 cups Bone Meal
1 1/2 cups Blood Meal
1 cup Epson Salts
1 cup Worm Castings

Then I mixed what was left of that mix 50/50 with an older hot mix that I can't find any notes on. I added 1 cup of 13-13-13 and 1/2 cup of time release plant food per five gallon bucket. The mild mix is cut 50/50 with Metro Mix potting soil. I used this mix in the CP patch.

This is what I called the Ho Ho Hot mix when I was making it over the Holidays. I used it in the GB, LP and 3DT patches. Not 100% sure, but I think this is also the mix I used in SLO and GV patches. I mixed up another batch of it today to finish the patches remaining.

25 gal Mushroom Compost
5 gal Peat Moss
5 gal Black Kow
5 gal Potting Soil {Metro Mix}
2 1/2 gal Lava Rock
1 cup Worm Castings {I know, I know. It's symbolic}
1 cup Epson Salts
1 cup Blood Meal
2 cups Bone Meal
2 cups Time Release Plant Food {I'll get the numbers on this later}
4 cups Lime
12 cups Coffee Grounds
13 cups 13-13-13

Next is the Long Walk mix. So far I have used it in the three hole BP patch. There is one more 6 hole patch I had planned to use it in. Got word today the land use on that piece of property might change in the near future. I will go ahead and risk it, but I will use something like Herman there. It is a long way away from any of the other patches, so if they do turn hermie on me, there would be no damage to the rest of the plants.

10 gal Mushroom Compost
10 gal Black Kow
5 gal Lava Rock
5 gal Potting Soil {Black Magic}
1 cup Epson Salts
2 cup Bone Meal
4 cup Lime
20 cup Coffee Grounds
7 cups Time Release Plant Food
14 cups {cheaper} Time Release Plant Food
21 cups 13-13-13

I went back down into the big woods, looking to dig three more holes. I walked due north from the fallen tree patch for about a quarter mile looking for sunlight, then jogged over 100 yards and went back due south for a quarter mile. The sunny spot I found was a couple hundred yards from the other holes. Long walk with a loaded pack wasted, if you don't count the cardio.

I got the three holes dug, but the last one is 4 cups short on 13-13-13. I'll bring it back later. Also need to bring in some perlite. Long walk or not, the soil really needs it. The dirt down in the swamp is so heavy it was sticking to the shovel.

There is an old busted up whiskey still between the two patches. Brick, broken glass, slashed drums and cans, and bands from wooden barrels is all that is left of that part of my family's drug dealing past. I'm guessing the last whiskey was made in those woods about 60 years ago. I did start growing there about 25 years ago.



I was leaning toward calling these six holes the WH patch, for Whiskey Hollow. But then I saw this Bent Sweet Gum tree.



BSG? Too bland? What if my plants there go on to start a rich and famous strain? How about SRG {Sweet Rainbow Gum}? That is a name that would sell.

I just read back through my first few posts and did a little arithmetic. I have dug holes in 10 patches. They are patches of 3, 4, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 4, 3 and 3 holes. Add all that up and it comes to 34 holes already dug. Since I had started out with a plan of 12 plants, I think it might be time for me to stop digging. The bad thing is I have Long Walk Darro Dirt dropped off in the woods for 6 more holes, and 13-13-13 and time release plant food {as well as a shovel} for 6 more in another location. I hate to bring it back to the Larro Ranchero without using it, so I might double up and do 3 really rich holes in each spot. That would bring me up to 40. I might add 2 more somewhere to keep it in multiples of 6. {I can carry six gallon pots at a time} All I can say is I hope we have a wet year.

We had a nice slow rain today, so I got out this morning and dug a few more holes. I had 10 gallons of the Long Walk mix already in the woods. But instead of doing the six holes planned for two sites, I did one 4'X5' trench for two plants, and I did two other holes in the same area. I had to cut an 8" Wild Cherry tree with my little handsaw for more southern exposure. Wild Cherry is hard wood. I haven't been to the 2nd site in person, just saw from looking at Google Earth there was sun there. I will keep it in mind for later. I don't want to invest too much time {or plants} on this land, just in case the trees get harvested early.

After lunch I went back to the GV patch to finish it off. I have a new batch of Darro Dirt mixed up, except for the small stuff {coffee grounds, blood and bone meal, Epson Salts, lime, etc. etc}, but it got to raining a little too hard for me to mix dirt, so I used a bucket of the Long Walk mix. I put 1/3 of in the 3rd hole I had dug a few days ago but was short on Darro Dirt, and 2/3 of in the 4th hole I dug this afternoon. That is 39 holes dug and ready for plants.

I took a couple of well crafted photos of all the plant food bags laid out where you could read the numbers on each container. But I have too many cameras. Both of the SD cards I brought with me today are blank. I thought I had changed out the one from my outside camera, but I must have put it back in. In my defense, they do all look alike.

But a quick Google search this morning, and I have all those numbers now. The 6 holes in the WH patch have 4 cups 13-13-13 and one cup each of 10-10-10, 9-6-12 TRPF, 15-9-12 TRPF, except for the last one, which I still owe 4 cups of 13-13-13 to. But it can wait.

I did do one more 3 hole patch. Each hole got 4 cups 13-13-13, one cup each of 10-10-10 and 9-6-12 TRPF and a cup and a half of 15-9-12 TRPF. This puts me at 42 holes, and I have no plans to dig anymore. But it is still a long time until spring, so who knows . . .

Now for a long rambling story. . . .

I'm calling the patch HR for Hallucie Remembered. Back in the day my main strain was from seeds in bags bought from a local grower. {he is the son of the grower that the Collection half of the Floral Collection came from} I started out calling the strain Big Speckled after the seeds. I was getting it from a third party, so I didn't know who the grower was to start with. For I learned who was growing it, I started calling it Pee Wee Stamp Collector, because he was known as ****** Jr. Their last name is another word for an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure, and I do love a pun.

But that was just too much of a mouthful, and the one trait that I loved above all others was the germination rate. If you set out to sprout 100 seeds you were likely to get 99 plants. So it became know as The Stand. I think he got the strain from his daddy, and if he did, it was 75% that old flat bud Colombian and 25% Afghan. It was tall and bushy with big fat buds. I did some planned breeding, as well as some unplanned, but my record keeping was not the best back then {about 20 years ago}. So I'm not sure just which two Stand plants the parents of the Hallucie were, but it was the 3rd or 4th year I had grown the strain. I planted her in young pine trees, topping her as often as I could. After the first topping {and smoking of said tops} I knew I had something special. I topped her as often as I could, and in the end she had 64 main tops. When she was flowering, there were fly's that looked like wasps laying eggs on her. The worms that hatched out were about as big as a pencil lead, but as they ate bud, they got as big as your little finger. It was growing like hell, and dying from the top down at the same time. I used a soap and tobacco spray, but couldn't get rid of all the worms, so I clipped early. I never weighed anything back then, but I got three big paper grocery bags of fresh clipped bud.

That gets us closer to the part of the story where she got named. I had a friend that was baby sitting for a lady friend of his one day when I came by to spin one up. He ask me if I would wait until his lady got back, but I had to get to the Larro Ranchero for a day of farming. She turned up just as we finished smoking, and she did pitch a little hissy fit because we didn't wait for her. I had a pinkie sized roach of the good stuff in my truck and I gave that to her. She had to drive her kid to her mom's house, about 20 miles away, so she didn't smoke it until the trip back. The next day she ask my friend how well he knew me, because she was pretty sure I had spiked that roach with something. She had to pull off the road and park because she was hallucinating. That is how she got named. The three holes I dug yesterday are in just about the same spot as I grew her.

I think the Collection half of the Floral Collection is related to my old Stand strain. The pine trees are taller, but the dirt is the same, so if these three holes produce plants half as pretty as the Hullucie, I will be happy.

I forgot to mention a sad event that happened yesterday. When I was packing a bowl with CP1 in a wind storm for the traditional hit for each hole dug, I missed a seed. Didn't see it until I had already scorched it pretty good..Sadly, there are very few CP1 seeds.

What can I say? I like round numbers, and 48 is nice and round. I set out yesterday with 3 bags of plant food premixed, planning to go to a small clearing I had seen back when I was scouting the woods past 3DT. But it would have been a long round about walk, and on the way there I remembered another downed tree I had seen closer by.



It came up by the roots and I dug a 3 plant trench {43rd, 44th and 45th holes} where the root ball came from. I'm out of the 9-16-12, but I used 4 cups of 13-13-13, and one cup each of 10-10-10 and 15-9-12. I will add the other when I go back with the plants. I had been leaning toward calling this patch ADT for Another Downed Tree, but then I saw this leaf while I was digging. Now I'm thinking of LL for Lacy Leaf.

This morning I added two holes near the patch where I cut the Wild Cherry. The food was the same as the holes above. I will add the other time release plant food when I bring in the plants. And I see I failed to name these patches. It will be WC or KP. This brings me to 47 holes. I need to add one more hole, but haven't decided just where it's going. I might do it in the logged land. I do have at least two spots scouted out there.

I got # 48 dug this week. It is in the logged land past 3DT. I used 1 bucket of Long Walk mix + 4 cups 13-13-13, 1 cup 10-10-10, 1 cup 5-19-12. Patch name is CE. Some land use issues have come up, so I won't be able to use the 3 hole LL trench. I wish I had waited a few days in digging that one. Might put in 3 more someplace else to replace it.