lazy-man's swamp bag method & wetland grow tips

I have tried all kinds of swamp growing methods over the years and have settled on what I have found to be the most efficient method using clones

I grow in peat media in small plastic grow bags (you can get biodegradable ones from your local hippie store) slightly dug into wetlands, standing water, or other areas that have wetland plants growing but do not appear to flood. rivers are not a good idea they will probably flood.

The bags that I use are about the size of a produce bag from a grocery store. You can fill with dry peat and organic feed mix and easily pack in about 50+ bags in one backpack load. Often I mix in some local "soil"/ muck to help wet out the peat (ph issues can be important), but I haul in bags and then bring cuttings later so generally peat will wet out enough to plant before I get back.

I dig down a footprint for the bag to somewhat below the standing water level and tear large holes in the bottom of the bag. I try to put a layer/liner of organic material (grass mulch, sticks) in the bottom of the hole to help support roots when they make it through the bag

Remember that water level will be up in spring, go down in summer, and then rise in the fall.

=find your sites early so that you know what they will look like water table wise through out the growing season

After planting cuttings I then cut down a bunch of plant material in the area that would be blocking sunlight, and I mulch the area on top of and around the bags heavily.

My peat planting mix generally includes N based organic fertilizer mix (some of it slow release or pellets) and sometimes (if I believe site will dry out completely) I include small amount of moisture crystals.

Normally, I will come back once to check plants and apply flowering organic nute mix. Sometimes I don't check plants before harvest or plant small cuttings late with no veg nutes, only flowering (P & K) fertilizer mix

When I lived in the states, a very useful web site was the "US fish and Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory Wetlands Mapper" - I am a new user on this site so I can apparently not post links, but do a google search. (Now that I live in canada I have to be more creative in finding sources of wetland maps

you can grow surprisingly large plants in a setup like this as roots will go through the bottom of the bag into what is below. But generally, I don't but much effort into maintenance (0, 1 or possibly 2 visits before harvest) so shooting for 1 oz/ plant avg (with a decent early outdoor strain, planted a little later than you would normally put plants outside in my area) is my goal.

If you plan to have large amount of the root structure of your monster plants outside the grow bag, then test ph and adjust appropriately as follows:

(wetlands can vary from very acidic to very alkaline)- It can really make a big difference if you get the soil and/or standing water ph closer to where it should be
-if ph is low add lime
-if ph is high you can try: -add lots of decomposing organic material to area -add rock sulfur -add manure

I hope you find some of these methods useful...

any variations, tips, etc, PLEASE POST

thank you!

Any post with the word "swamp" gets my attention, Greenbeanz, and your info may well be useful to me some day, so I'm printing it out for my reference files. Good post. Thanks

i used paper bags last year with good results. not the big grocery ones, but the heavier ones about 3-4 gallons. i put my mix (promix bx, blood, bone, 9-9-6extended release, triple19, lime/woodash, and composted manure if its not too far of a walk) in em in march, then planted may24. the bags held up all year, and only a few broke. the ones that broke waited till they were full of roots, so it didnt matter.

paperbags are easy to haul in, and a huge duffel bag of mix is fairly light if dry.

I used to grow at the edge of Beaver swamps up in Washington state, I work in the woods a lot, and came across dozens of remote swamps. I'd pick a spot in thick brush on the up stream end of the swamp, in a place where the ground was solid but always moist. I'd make planters on the spot from small logs(like a log cabin), and fill it with enriched potting soil, then I'd trim the willows just enough to allow good amounts of sunshine in.
I'd do 4-5 at several swamps, using old ones from the previous year if possible. It was a great system, I rarely revisited until harvest time, and only had a failure a handful of times over 8 years of doing it. Nothing like swamp growing!

Now I'm in dry ass Nor-Cal, I have found Beaver swamps here, but none isolated enough, so now I'm switching up for another option, too bad, I loved the swamp growing.....

Excellent thread. I will definitely be checking in on this one from time to time.

10 32 gallon trash cans
cut bottoms out
haul your soil in during the winter cause once summer hits your trail will be gone!

fill the trash cans up with your soil mix, i use Jungle Growth, peat moss, perlite and some organic crap from home depot and lowes.

You have pretty much Jan-April to get all the crap done. You can do it all in a week if you are a badass but i chose to do a little here and there.

Come May, transplant your light adjusted clones into the trash cans and sit back and wait for the rains.

My swamp gets about 1-2feet deep during the summer. All the plant life comes back making what ever trails there where hidden and only a crazy fcker is gonna go trucking thru that shit anyway. No deer or anything else will be eating your plants either cause they cant get back to them.

Good times........

Pics of these set ups and live plants in them???

how bout a mental pic? go to walmart in the freezer section. grab a paper bag from the end of the isle, the ones for keeping ur icecream frozen and ur tater tots cold. they are double thick. now fill it up with appropriate dirt, and put a plant in the top. ta-da

Mental will do.....good idea also as its a bio degradable product.

I tell ya, swamp growing is the only way to go for me. Security, constant water, huge yield potential, security.... I had great success with swamp tubes, first try, and was actually planning something similar to this for next year. Rather than haul in rolls of chicken wire and what not, I figured I could make the "tubes" out of sticks and just wrap em in heavy plastic. Three 3' long stakes set about 1' in the ground to form an equilateral triangle, wraped in heavy plastic and filled with soil mix. The nice thing about this is it would allow for a somewhat larger planter than a bag from the grocery store. On the other hand, biodegradable material would definately be preferable in most situations, unless you were planning on reusing the planters.

I'm totally pumped on this swamp growing thing for this year. I'm hoping that by planting many seeds instead of clones or seedlings, spreading them out through several swamps, making a minimum number of visits, and implimenting a collapsible cardboard box variation (to make it easier to backpack several of them into the swamp) of tasteOrganic's trash can/dessicant bud dryer, I can pull off a very low-risk grow with a good potential for return. Like Swamp Thang, I've been checking out everything with the word "swamp", and I've gotten a lot of cool ideas from folks around here. These ideas and innovations will go a long way in helping to improve and refine my own tactics. Mad props y'all.

Swamps are great

Swamps are great

I love it in the swamps , To get to my plots one has to get wet . I figure that security is good because not many people have a big need to go hiking through a swamp and get wet and muddy . Bloodsucking insects are a small nuisence but thats what repellent is for . Now beavers on the other hand i wish they made a non lethal repellent for them ! They can ruin a good crop in a week by building a dam and a person would need to run a 3 shift operation to keep up with em . I had some good pictures here but deleted them . I will look through some CD 's and try to find them . I use sticks to make a circle "holding" fence for Pro mix . I like using natural stuff simply for descreteness .
These are at the edge of a swamp
peace
mutt

Gotta love the swamp. I can't use the water in many mine as it reeks of sulfur but most everything else is ideal. No sane person is gonna hike through a swamp, and they can provide great camo as well, just look at stinky's pics. Only thing one needs to worry about is PM and bud rot as swamps tend to be low lying and the fog will settle there first.

A few of my spots this year also include other wetlands with better water that I hope so only have to visit a couple of times.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that enjoys the labor of walking through swamps while trying not to mind the skeeters/horse flies!

Oh and for a great thread on swamp growing check out thatguy's and swamp thangs threads in this forum.

what I would like to point out here is that (in my humble opinion), there is no need to haul in garbage can sized loads of soil. I like peat because it is very lightweight to pack in and you can soak it in the swamp to wet it out, come back to put in cuttings and it will be ready to go- but use what ever soil mix you like

If you rip out the bottom of your gro-bags (mine have aprox volume 8"-10" x 8" x 8", to give you a better idea) -or make provisions for the roots to go through to what ever is below with whatever type of container you are using- and build a network out of sticks twigs decomposing material, mulch from on site and muck for the roots to grow into, your plants will have plenty room to get big and yield really well. juice them from above once or twice, and you are good to go...

Although big plants is no longer what I shoot for, it would not be difficult to average 3oz with a good strain and only one check up to come back and give them p&k (flowering nutes).... With certain strains I was able to have some plants yield 5-7 oz out of these same small bags!

most all of my plots require waders (or wading to your waist without them) to get to most of the year

good luck!

thanks greenbeanz, I have been thinking of ways to get grow container out to my spot that I can fit into a backpack. Hauling huge trashcans out of a car is out of the question, and would draw way to much attention. Peat works well you say... any other materials?

My plan was to bring out worm castings, perlite, and vermiculite, peat sounds like another great ingrediant to add. Do you have any experience with trying other media's like coco?

How do you assure that the plant and container stays up properly? Do you steak a reed down thru the bag attaching it to the underlying wetlands?

useful tips...

useful tips...

Worms Way stocks 30 gallon camo grow bags.

Also, compressed coco blocks are much easier to haul than peat. BTW, I got this tip from Greens, a master Canadian swamp grower, and one hell of a breeder as well.

phrank

We've been discussing these quite extensively on that other forum. They're super nice folks and will make custom sized pots for you at no extra charge. I'm going to do a swamp grow this year and have placed an order for some 60 gallon mamma-jammahs. It will be Sweettooth, White Widow, and possibly a few Strawberry Haze.

I like the gro bags linked VERY MUCH but I as well as lazy, I am cheap. you can find the "biodegradable" plastic bags in green sometimes. covered with some mulch = nice camo.

I don't do anything to stake bags down and haven't had real issues although sometimes a plant will fall over (they still generally survive)- to me this is not a bad thing as if I had the chance I would tie plants down to increase light to lower budsites anyways.

COCO- yes, this is very tightly packed stuff especially well suited for mixing with wet soils (forest or muck) Not universally available but more popular every year. Personally I have found that it just takes too much work to break it up and wet it out. But it would certainly make sense if you :
-were packing a really long distance
-had a good system for (soaking) wetting it out, and were coming back to put in plants at a later date
-had a lot of patience to stick around and mix

Maybe someone who has used this stuff on a larger scale has some advice for breaking it up and wetting it out efficiently ..? I think product "coco soft" may be available easier to break up than "coco choir" made by "canna"

cool stuff though -use it the same as peat but expands like 8x !!! make sure the stuff you get has been leached out (generally by manufacturer) even then the ph may be quite low so check it.

greenbeanz said:

I like the gro bags linked VERY MUCH but I as well as lazy, I am cheap. you can find the "biodegradable" plastic bags in green sometimes. covered with some mulch = nice camo.

I don't do anything to stake bags down and haven't had real issues although sometimes a plant will fall over (they still generally survive)- to me this is not a bad thing as if I had the chance I would tie plants down to increase light to lower budsites anyways.

COCO- yes, this is very tightly packed stuff especially well suited for mixing with wet soils (forest or muck) Not universally available but more popular every year. Personally I have found that it just takes too much work to break it up and wet it out. But it would certainly make sense if you :
-were packing a really long distance
-had a good system for (soaking) wetting it out, and were coming back to put in plants at a later date
-had a lot of patience to stick around and mix

Maybe someone who has used this stuff on a larger scale has some advice for breaking it up and wetting it out efficiently ..? I think product "coco soft" may be available easier to break up than "coco choir" made by "canna"

cool stuff though -use it the same as peat but expands like 8x !!! make sure the stuff you get has been leached out (generally by manufacturer) even then the ph may be quite low so check it.

Click to expand...

Just leave the coir at your spot a month before planting to let the rain soak and hydrate the medium, not sure whats so diffucult about breaking it up?