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Treetop Marijuana Growing Guide: Best Techniques And Practices Of Growing Weed In Trees

Last updated: 27 September 2023

Cannabis growing in the tree top

Get ready for one way to grow you’ve probably never heard of: growing weed in a tree. This practice is a fairly new way to design a garden and is one of the stealthiest ways to grow. If you’ve ever suffered from the theft of plants from your outdoor grow or consequences of unwanted attention, this technique is the perfect way to make sure you never face this trouble again.

Treetop Guerilla Grow: How Does It Work?

Growing weed in trees is a fairly simple concept, but like any good plan, it’s all in the execution. If you’re an outdoor grower looking for a unique way to hide your plants from prying eyes, look no further. We’ve outlined some of the best ways to grow in trees with this treetop marijuana growing guide.

Pros Of Growing Weed In A Treetop

The number-one advantage to a treetop guerilla grow is obviously stealth. It’s extremely difficult for would-be investigators to discover a treetop garden, leaving you to focus on cultivating your plant. In addition, you won’t be growing your plant on your property. As a result, even if your garden is discovered, you won’t get in trouble for having it.

Treetop grows also get plenty of light, since they’re closer to the sun than a plant on the ground is. This will super-charge your plants, ultimately leading to a higher yield than growing on the ground. Building your garden in a pre-existing tree will also help protect it against animals such as deer and other land-bound predators.

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Cons Of Growing Weed In A Treetop

Although growing cannabis in a tree has several benefits, it’s not a perfect technique. First of all, it’s an extremely physically demanding way to grow. To check on your garden, you’ll either need to climb your tree or devise a way to raise and lower your plant as needed. Either way, this task requires a grower to be in decent physical shape. The other issue you’re going to face is watering. If you live in a dry area without plenty of rainfall, you’re going to need to take care of watering your garden by yourself.

How To Grow Weed In A Treetop

Before you even think about growing weed in trees, you need to complete a few tasks. First, you need to find the right tree. Then, you need to decide on the correct spot to place your plant inside the tree you picked. Once you have the right tree and location, you’ll need to remove any branches blocking sunlight from reaching your plant. Also, don’t forget to plant directly into your final pot. While this might sound like a lot, don't worry – we're going to break all this information into easy-to-digest pieces.

How to hide your marijuana crop
Some tree-top growers integrate drip irrigators made from plastic bottles into their grows

Finding The Right Tree

In a sense, finding a good candidate for a treetop garden is similar to discovering a good climbing tree – you’re going to need low branches that you can use to pull yourself higher into the canopy. If you can’t access the canopy, it’ll be impossible to get your plant up there.

A good growing tree also needs to have a big, bushy canopy. If the tree doesn’t have enough canopy growth, it won’t offer enough cover for your garden. Don’t worry if the tree you choose has excessive canopy growth – you can always clear some if necessary.

Decide On The Spot For The Plant

Once you’ve chosen which tree to use for your garden, you’ll need to determine where in the tree to put your plant. When growing weed in trees, choosing the right spot is nearly as important as picking the right tree.

Make sure that the spot you pick is close to the top. The reason for this is twofold. First, it’ll ensure that your plant is as close as possible to the sun, giving it ample opportunity to absorb light. Second, keeping your plant high in a tree will lower the chances of its discovery.

Remove Any Branches Blocking Out Sunlight

After you’ve found the perfect tree and picked a great spot, you need to remove any branches blocking direct sunlight from reaching your plant. If the canopy above your plant is too bushy, it won’t receive enough light and will slowly die. It’s important to remember only to remove foliage above your plant when you do this. Removing any foliage below your plant may increase the risk of someone discovering that you’re using a treetop for growing weed. Avoid this by leaving lower foliage in place to camouflage your garden.

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Plant Directly Into The Final Pot

Once you get your plant into the canopy of your treetop garden, you should remove it as little as possible. As we mentioned before, moving your plant is going to be hard work, and each time you do it, you’ll run the risk of being discovered.

Because of these factors, it’s a good idea to plant your weed directly into the largest pot you’re going to use. By eliminating transplanting from the equation, you’ll cut down on a significant amount of work. Just make sure you’re giving your plant ample time to dry out between watering. Plants in large pots with undeveloped root systems are especially susceptible to fungal infections if the soil gets too wet.

Tips For Successful Treetop Cannabis Growing

Think you understand the basics of a treetop guerilla grow? If you’ve got the basics down, we’ve outlined a few more tips below to help you maximize your garden’s effectiveness. Using a pulley system can help make your job easier, while painting your bucket, using a burlap sack, and avoiding trails can ensure no one discovers your plant. Meanwhile, using more than one plant per tree, growing fast-flowering strains, and adding gel beads to your soil can increase your chances of a successful harvest. Follow along for a detailed breakdown of these points.

Use A Pulley System

Cannabis trellising

Want to cut down on labor and time in your treetop garden? Installing a pulley system is the simplest way to do so. You can use a pulley system to move your plants from the canopy to the ground and back, eliminating the need to water your plants in the tree’s canopy.

Making a pulley system is actually very easy. Put your plant in a basket and make sure that you have four points of contact between the rope and basket so your plant doesn’t fall out. You’ll also need to make sure that the pulley system is hidden from view.

When Growing Weed In Trees, Paint Your Pot

Even if you have a dense canopy beneath your treetop guerilla grow, it might not be enough to hide your pot from a casual observer. This is especially true if your pot is brightly colored. To help your pot blend into your clandestine treetop grow, paint it in camouflage colors. Forest green, brown, and black hues generally work best, helping to make your treetop grow invisible to passersby.

Use A Burlap Sack

To avoid using pots entirely in your treetop garden, use a burlap sack as a container for your medium. Burlap sacks are difficult to identify from the ground, and they also collect moisture and dew from the surrounding tree branches. If you’re worried about a bystander noticing your burlap sack, fear not. You can find pre-camouflaged burlap in many hunting stores and online. This makes identification almost impossible and provides all the benefits of regular burlap.

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Avoid Planting Near Trails

One of the main goals of a treetop guerilla grow is avoiding detection. In addition to growing in a treetop, there are a few extra precautions you can take to improve your garden’s stealth. One of the most important is building your garden in isolated areas. Make sure your grow is far away from trails, where hikers or bird watchers may spot them. In addition, don’t build your treetop grow near a cliff – anyone on top of the cliff will be able to look down onto your grow from above the canopy. And, of course, make sure to remember the exact spot where you left your plants – have some hard-to-detect signs nearby to remember the position of your guerilla grow.

Plant More Than One Plant Per Tree

To make the most efficient treetop garden possible, put more than one plant in each tree whenever possible. Putting more than one plant in a tree can exponentially increase your garden’s yield. Don’t install more than four plants per tree, though – this may actually increase your chances of detection, and watering will take considerable time and effort.

For A Treetop Garden, Use Early Finishing Strains

When stealth is your main goal, it’s always a good idea to use fast-growing strains. You need to grow your plants early in the season, before the trees' leaves begin to fall off in autumn and expose your grow op. Also bear in mind that when growing in treetops, it’s best to plant early in the growing season. If you wait until too late in the summer, your plants won’t have enough sunlight to vegetate. Using autoflower seeds can minimize the impact of this issue.

Add Gel Beads To Your Soil

Gel beads, also known as water beads, can help retain water in the soil of your treetop garden. Using gel beads can help your medium hang on to natural moisture from dew and raindrops, minimizing your need to water your plants. If you live in an area with enough precipitation, you may not even need to worry about watering your plants at all during the grow cycle. Gel beads are also easy to procure, as they’re readily available in garden stores and online.

Plant Your Roots In The Canopy

For outdoor growers looking for a stealthy way to hide their plants from nosy neighbors and thieves, a treetop guerilla grow is tough to beat. The combination of stealth and high exposure to sunlight is an unusual duo that nonetheless complements each other perfectly. Using this technique, even growers without any land of their own can cultivate outdoor cannabis gardens. Try it for yourself, and let us know how it turned out in the comments below.

Herbies Head Shop expressly refuses to support the use, production, or supply of illegal substances. For more details read our Legal Disclaimer.

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