Color Coding your plants for Outside/Guerilla Grow

While planning for my 2012 Guerilla Grow Project, I had one issue that kept bugging me. How was I going to know which plant was exactly what strain when harvesting?

Make a precise map? Place one of those white plastic gardening tags? Burry something in the ground? Tie something around the stalk? All fell short because of the obvious downsides to each of these 'solutions'. It gets lost, blown away, is too tight around the stalk for normal growing, etc. etc.

Then when searching our basement for an inventive solution, it came to me! My wife uses elastic colored hair bands to tie up the manes of our horses, those could do the trick!

You can easily shove them over the cup and onto the stalk when planting and no matter how thick the stalk gets, it'll stretch enough to cope with that. Also it can't easily be blown away or anything, is durable enough to last a couple of months of rough weather and you don't need to dig up a (by then of course disappeared) tag when harvesting.

I have made some pictures to show you the general idea of it.

Hope you like this idea and that it is of any use to you!

I usually just use plastic strips with strain / cross name on in, but this idea is good as well

lob19 said:

I usually just use plastic strips with strain / cross name on in, but this idea is good as well

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Don't wanna write what strain it is on the plants. If somebody finds it and reads a name on it they know it is something special for sure.

I LOVE this idea! I've found that the markings come off the plastic tags, even indelible ink markers fade with exposure to sunlight. I have also found, and this year it's bad enough that I don't know who anyone is right now, that the plastic tags you stick into the pots come out and end up being moved far too easily. It's not so bad once the plants are in the ground, but it can still be a problem (especially if kitty gets in there to start making the bed is litter box).

I got some plastic tags that you leave wrapped around the base of the plant, but again, I'm expecting the marker to fade. This is just like bird banding and other methods scientists use to track animals for which it may be easy to get a visual but not so easy to get a hold of.

Not to mention the INSANE simplicity of being able to go to ANY market and get these hair ties.

In other words, why didn't I think of this before????

This is a great idea. They grow with the stem. Awesome.

Thanks for sharing this.

HA ha ha ha hahahah!!! This is a belly buster. You need to stop smoking so much fukin pot!!! ha ha! I hope you put your shoes in the same place each night, you'll never find them either! ha ha ha.

Im just teasing you a little bit. YOu know, you can write on that cup! But really, I dont know how many strains youre growing, but i usually grow 4 or 5 in 8-10 differnt spots and in years of growing, ive never had to wonder which strain was which. It just aint that complicated. I mean, you sprout them, plant them, tend to them all friggin summer and .... Ha hahahahah!

Sober the fuck up man. At least long enough to figure out which plants are which and where theyre planted! Dont burn one untill you get home from the chores. You may not know this, but pot affects your memory sometimes. !!!!!!!

moondawg said:

HA ha ha ha hahahah!!! This is a belly buster. You need to stop smoking so much fukin pot!!! ha ha! I hope you put your shoes in the same place each night, you'll never find them either! ha ha ha.

Im just teasing you a little bit. YOu know, you can write on that cup! But really, I dont know how many strains youre growing, but i usually grow 4 or 5 in 8-10 differnt spots and in years of growing, ive never had to wonder which strain was which. It just aint that complicated. I mean, you sprout them, plant them, tend to them all friggin summer and .... Ha hahahahah!

Sober the fuck up man. At least long enough to figure out which plants are which and where theyre planted! Dont burn one untill you get home from the chores. You may not know this, but pot affects your memory sometimes. !!!!!!!

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My goal is to never visit my plants...without documentation i wouldn't know the strain either.
@OP: Many thanks, good idea!

DutchGrower420 said:

Don't wanna write what strain it is on the plants. If somebody finds it and reads a name on it they know it is something special for sure.

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If someone finds it, you really think it's important whether it's labelled?

The problems with colour coding are -
1) forgetting the code
2) not having the right colour thing with you when you need it
3) trying to grow more strains than you have colours for
4) rats eating your bungees/bands

I think you're better off looking at how professionals mark their plants in a nursery - usually pencil on white plastic or copper.
There are good reasons why.

Í remember them by relative position to eachother, altough I can imagine that with greater numbers and more strains that could be less convenient, in that case I would use more natural markers, a wellplaced rock or twig or so. when I prepped one spot early in the year I stuck twigs upright in the soil at some places where I had dug inn fertilizer, only marked the edges of the spot, and coing back a few months later to plant sedlings those where still there, and since I remembered the shape of the patch of soil I had dug fertilizer in and the placement of the twigs reative to this shape, I could easily deduce wich soil had fertilizer dug in

Good idea, yes nunsacred brings very good points, remain that guerilla setting is not a nursery and with a little planning it would be easy to keep all colours at hand. I have many plants this year and while I have given it a lot of thought I decided to stick with the while plastic labels for the time being. One of the reason is that I too like to force myself to remember every details as much as possible and having a minimum amount of 'markers" forces me to memorize things. For instance, when I scout I drive around a lot and every so often I make a point of going on google map and find my roads, intersections and spots. Eventually it forces me to be very aware of not only my spots but the area in the vicinity as well (nothing like birds eye view point to make you aware of what's around you). I feel that the more aware one is of their surroundings the better. Years of experience working in the bush teaches that to people: it you always know where you are you never get lost! Sounds simplistic but it's very true, trust me. That way one never get's lost and never waste too much time looking for things. So I am planning to kind of do the same with my plants (that's what I have always done except that now I just have many more). If every time I get there I remind myself that there is an Erdbei here and a polar Ice there eventually it just comes on it's own.

But, great idea, I feel there is mileage in that!

Nunsacred said:

If someone finds it, you really think it's important whether it's labelled?

The problems with colour coding are -
1) forgetting the code
2) not having the right colour thing with you when you need it
3) trying to grow more strains than you have colours for
4) rats eating your bungees/bands

I think you're better off looking at how professionals mark their plants in a nursery - usually pencil on white plastic or copper.
There are good reasons why.

Click to expand...

You loose all plausible deniability when you mark your spots in your handwriting.
You have to drive them facedown in the earth so rain and weather don't deface them. Pita to find at harvest, especially at spots with lush undergrowth of nastiness (thorns, vines, stinging nettles).
And you have to transfer the marking directly/ only use one shroud/barrel/whatever per plant.
All extra stress at the most stressfull moment of the whole year.

I break popsicle sticks and number them of course I have the key! indelible ink and buried next to em. large azz containers get marked on the bottom and just under the indside rim. I wouldn't care if someone saw what it was as they are rippin em anyways.