I know that many dispute climate change, but Im stuck dead in the middle of it. After years of growing, I have come to know the aspects of my grow enviroment and of strains that perform well in it.

Thats gone. Of the 1/2 dozen strains that I thought I knew their every need, pheno and potential, several have turned out to be very heat intolerant and don't perform well anymore. Im having to look more toward afghani's with smaller yeilds as they are used to a tough enviroment and seem to do better.

Im having to change the way i grow. In the past, once a plant showed acceptable potency, my only focus was yield. With my new enviroment, yield is irrelavant as Im lucky to keep them growing enough so that they mature. Response to heat and moisture levels has become the primary focus.

My weather and my growing enviroment has changed dramatically over the past few years to the point that it is a major consideration in the grow.

Am I the only grower that is happening too??

[medicine farmer]

i dont have years of experience to back this up....but global warming is not about everything "getting hot." its really only a few degrees change needed to cause big problems. Global warming makes the floods broader and the droughts drier, it makes the cold snaps colder and the heat waves hotter. Global warming basically makes the climate more extreme in every way. extremes are hard to deal with and grow in...as your years of experience show....


how many ladies do you do and how often do you go see them?
do you dig deep narrow holes or big wide ones?
do you use a mulching agent, water crystal, or any sorta of irrigation?
have you considered a plastic tarp w/ holes in it under a mulch to let rain soak in but stop evaporation?
do you line the walls of your holes with plastic? alot of folks swear by it....
have you ever considered (may not be an option) a swamp grow? no watering there
im pullin alot of these ideas out my ass here....
your subterrainian watering device will make watering more effective, how can you make the water last longer b/t visit ???????
i try to make an easily accessible "control patch" thats as similar to all the others in as many ways as i can so i can have a better handle on when they need water....oh yeah and im pretty sure your part of the country has been in one of the worst droughts in 75 years....i know mine has...under normal circumstances, like you get rainfall like you did in say 1995, would this be an issue?
sorry for answering your post with a buncha questions.....im just trying to get a firm grasp on what your exactly dealing with.

[BACKCOUNTRY]

My summers have always been hot and dry, growing big plants guerrilla style has never been remotely easy, my largest only came by going to extreme measures to increase watering efficiency(in 2007), and by grouping most of my plants in a large plot right next to a water supply(bad for security)

We are having many winters though where total rainfall has dropped, resulting in even drier summer seasons where year round sources of water dry up before the first rains of Fall, this winter is such a season, I anticipate lots of scrambling to find water in mid and late summer this year.

My old stand by strain OR95, is a old Afgani cross strain that has always been grown and bred outdoors(for decades), its genetics never made soft by being bred for indoors. The down side of Afganis though are their tendency to make huge thick buds under good conditions, which can turn into mold farms late in the season.
Breeding to a hardy early sativa dom variety like C99 seems to help with bud mold problems.

These days many grower all across the nation seem to be in the same boat with me, dry summers, lots of water hauling, struggling to get a minimum harvest.

My bottom line advice? Start storing water now! A couple hours of work done storing water in the cool of winter now will save you days of hauling water in sweltering heat this summer.
I spent some spare time this week building Rain harvesters near some of my more remote plots, just a brown tarp hanging in a tree to collect and dump water into garbage cans. Otherwise I have finally located enough good planting areas near reliable water holes in the hills that I should do better this summer.

[gobbler3447]

Whether its climate changes or a natural weather cycle, I don't know.. The one thing for certain growing outdoors in those cycles is alot of work.

Thus far this year we have had a few mornings when the temp was in the 20 degree range. A few months ago it was in the mid 90's and a hurricane was on the horizon.. After a few years (20+) you just learn to do what your senses tell you..

For example: Katrina, you don't have to say hurricane, down here we all remember.. 6 weeks with no utilities except water, trees down so bad you had to crawl through the woods, several of my ladies crushed, and then 72 hellishly hot dry days with little or no hope for rain...fortunatly I had access to 5 gallon containers (commercial cooking oil containers) and filled them early on in the drought from standing water from the storms rain,(point, theres never enough) for the next two and a half months nature seemed to heal itself lots of new growth on dammaged plants, but fertilizer was demanded for this new growth. long story, short from the survivors, a fantastic yeild of 4+ lbs. That amount saw me through a mediocher harvest the next year. So if its where you can, start collecting water, just like the scouts Be Prepared. I will! By the way did any of you raise your hand and do the oath the way our troop did, "...keep myself physically strong, morally streight and mentally erect" Grow on brothers!!!!

[hamstring]

I am a believer in global warming but also understand that there are cyclic changes in my area. What ever it is up until about 3 years ago I felt the same way as you at least about my grow areas. I do not have the extensive strain and overall grow knowledge as you do but felt my strong suit was picking a grow site because of years of outdoor activities (trapping, hunting, hiking, camping).

Like you said that has went down the drain for last 3-4 years now. Many of my sites are now threatened by flooding and I have had to make snap decisions (got ripped first time in 8 years) on new grow sites. I am in the stage of rediscovering sites and trying to get a handle on flood prone areas that I never had to worry about. I always have tried to pick a couple new sites each year but now its much harder because I have to develop a new skill set to pick them.

I also was learning to expand on yield and strain knowledge but now it’s a whole new ball game. Good luck this year I hope you get some of my rain and snow and I’ll take some of your heat.


Wanted to post pics but cant figure out how.
PEACE

[NL5/SK1]

Silverback,

I noticed last year that my last frost 39 degree lat. was in late March- it used to be mid to late April before I could put my plants out without fear of frost. I also used to have a killing frost by Oct. 31. Last year it didn't come until Nov. 17. So I'd say there is a two to three week extension on both sides. I still have that ugly storm around laber day or just after-blowing down my plants as well as the tall weeds that provide cover(last 3 or 4 seasons). I find that only well established hardy sativas will allow a true guerilla grow-relying on rain only. I had more problems with mold and helicopters in early October or I could have run into mid November.

Good luck with the weather this time around.

[hamstring]

Here's what one of my favorite spots looks like today. This is a small-forested area and all the ice has is 3-4 feet of water under it. The whole forest floor is flooded this winter. Last season in June it was under water also. I haven't grown in this area for 3 years used to be a goto spot every year.

Figured out how to post pics let me know if any guerillas are having problems. Took me awhile but I have it now.
PEACE

[D.S. Toker. MD]

I live in an area such as hamstring. We are drowning in rain. Last season i couldnt plant and then when I did plant, the plants were constantly drenched all summer. This year will be my 6th grow and I didn't need a boat for the first 4 grows.

Just a few hundred miles south, there is xtreme drought.

[antimatter]

Global Warming is a huge reality and in 50-70 years the earth is gonna be a different place to live on, this greenhouse effect is terraforming our earth at a rapid rate and were basically fucked our sun is just gonna get hotter, we have already killed off 30% of the species on earth in the past 30 years and eventually the sun is gonna destroy our biosphere... fun in the sun..

heres a good speech by Obamas Climate Change advisor
https://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=RKFJ-b...eature=channel

[LazLo]

Fell asleep before end of a new program last week. A NEW disease of the native population was responsible for more deaths than the Old World diseases brought to them. The Europeans were familiar with many diseases and were unable to identify it. That disease was related to a 500 year cycle shown in tree rings.

Fall of Empires Hastened 'Little Ice Age'
Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Dec. 22, 2008 -- The vast empires of the Incas and Aztecs were highly advanced. They kept detailed tax records, built elaborate temples, and at their height, Central and South America boasted a thriving population of as many as 60 million souls.

But their grand civilizations bore another trapping of modernity, scientists have found, one that until recently was thought unique to our industrialized world: human-induced climate change.

In the 16th century, the diseases Europeans brought to the New World decimated native peoples. With no natural defense against smallpox, yellow fever, and a host of exotic new pathogens, 90 percent of the population was dead by 1600.

"We're talking about wiping out about 9 percent of the world's population at the time," said Richard Nevle of Bellarmine College Preparatory School, in San Jose, Calif.
According to Nevle and co-author Dennis Bird of Stanford University, the killing left a lasting impact on the global climate. Suddenly as much as 500,000 square kilometers (193,051 square miles) of cleared farmland was no longer being tended, an area slightly larger than California. And as the rainforest crept back in, it vacuumed carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the process.

In all, the authors estimate that reforestation of South and Central America could've removed up to ten billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Around the same time, climate records show from that global temperatures cooled about 0.1 degrees centigrade (about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1500 until 1750. But in northern Europe the dip was far more dramatic, and came to be known as the Little Ice Age.

"You had advancing glaciers, frost and snow in places it had never been seen before," Bird said. "When you have a couple of years of bad weather, people take notice. But when you have 200 bad winters in a row, that's something to write home about."

"You expect that after a pandemic like that, you're going to see a recovery in land cover," said Jed Kaplan of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study. "We see a similar sort of reforestation following a real crash in population after the Black Death, from 1350 to 1450."

CO2 levels didn't drop nearly as much after the Black Death, perhaps three parts per million, compared to five to eight ppm following the American pandemic.

Nevle and Bird admit that volcanic activity and a decrease in the sun's intensity probably both played roles in triggering the Little Ice Age. Still, Bird said, human activity was undeniably important.

"Humans have been altering climate for longer than we ever imagined," Bird said.

"We can use this as an analogy to what we're dealing with today [with global warming]," he added. "We are going to have to have some drastic changes in our lifestyle, and they have to be long-lived if we're going to get out of this mess we're currently in."