Plant Damage by Rip Offs

Well, it was only a matter of time. In my 30+ years of growing, I've never been ripped off. Until now. Asshole came in the one hour we were away (8-9pm), ripped out the Afghani Goo I should have harvested yesterday and my biggest sativa that wasn't even ready yet. The other sativa he couldn't twist out of the ground so it was left laying. The twist is bad on one fork (two main stems), like he tried to rip it off the plant when the trunk wouldn't part from the roots and the roots wouldn't let go for nuthin'. There's easy another 2 weeks to go on this plant, IF it survives.

Is there anything I can do for this big mama to keep her alive and finish budding, or should I just cut my losses and harvest her now? Will this savaging shock her out of bud? Hell, I guess I'll know more in the morning whether she's really dead or not.

What a bummer...there has been a rash of ripoffs in the area around me, what bothers me is that our patch can't be seen from any side and I don't have any unknown traffic in or out of here (my property doesn't front any road--it's my private road in so there is no through traffic and no possible drive by's). It's obviously someone that knows my dogs too, which means...well, a "friend" had to have done it. A neighbor.

DAMMIT.

This really fucks up my harvest in a BIG way and gouges a big hole in my livelihood meant to see me through winter...

*in tears*

 

Damn Lady . Im really sory to hear. This just goes to confirm my most solid ideaoligy. People SUCK. I guess you will know more bout how bad your remaining plant is in the morning. Sometimes deprendin on how severe the wound is you can tape it up a bit. I hope she helps ya a bit this winter. Its a damn shame bout the reasons but it looks like your gonna have to getcher indoor goin. If ya get 3 x 400 or 3 x 600 lights and a hydro system runnin in a fyew weeks, you can shurly have Herb before ya run out of it because of your shortage. You can do a bubble system, an nft or an earo system or something. If you do alright you can make a livin offa 3 lights like this, especially if you chose to do an aero system. You could even do it legally in your state ! Youd be helpin Folks who are helpin you . 6 lights would send ya over the top I bet! If theres anything I could tell ya that I know to help ya let me know and Il tell ya what I can. For now if ya want to, get some 5 gallon bukkits and some airstones and pumps along with some FFGB 3-2-6 so when ya decide whatcha wanna do youl have somethin to put your clones in. If ya like Il tell ya how to take cuttings and perpetuate a flower room every other week, that'l getcha threw winter! I betcha stop showin up for work too! Blessins on ya Lady. Dont let it getcha down, its just an oportunity in descise.

 

Unfortunatly, sometimes it's not the strangers; it's the friends and neighbors. In my 40 years of growing I've been ripped off about 10 times, including earlier this year.

Planting ultra-remote is a viable tactic in guerilla growing, but in your backyard you gotta have security.
The 5 plants I got ripped off were ones I stuck in the woods since I ran out of space at my house and it put me over my legal limit.
I know who did it.
In a surprizing instance of swift, severe Kharma, the person responsible had a heart attack 5--6 weeks after they ripped me off. Which ended their career of walking through the woods ripping people off.
My legal backyard garden is protected by a barbed-wire enclosure, motion detector lights and siren, wireless camera, and a dog. In addition, to get to it is very difficult unless you know the "secret".
If intruders are ever out in my garden I'm gonna grab my 12-gauge and fire a round (in the ground). That should send them skedaddling.

P.S. my neighbor, who wouldn't rip me off because he's got a garden too, looks out for me whenever I'm away, and I do the same for him.

 

At first light yesterday morning I went out to see the carnage in the light. Easily 80% of our crop is gone and the one sativa that held on by the teeth of its roots was standing tall, though that one fork was ruined and had to be cut from the bush. I brought that half of the plant inside and cut the ragged stump under water so it could hold on until I can clone some of the branches. It's perky this morning.

Buffed up my tracking talents and followed the trail from the patch, over our little footbridge that spans the stream on the north side of the acreage, and through the orchards to the first road half a mile away. He who stole our plants broke one of his flip-flops in the mud and left them across that road. Familiar footwear... Picked up the trail again and followed it another half mile through orchards and finally over a wire fence and into a friend's backyard. The drag marks, bare footprints and the bread-crumb trail of leaves terminated at the back of his broken down pickup where I found the fresh remnants of the plants--sun leaves and a couple of muddy buds he'd stepped on and ruined.

I went to his front door and hammered away until he answered. Talk about that shocked and guilty deer-in-headlights look when he saw me standing there. "Where's my fucking plants, Chester?" Which brought the stuttered reply, "What plants?"

If I didn't have arthritis so bad in my hands I would have punched him in the nose right then and there, and I'm anything but a violent person. This is the guy we bought the clones from. This is the guy we've fed when he's been hungry, given money to when he's been down and out, given him shelter when he's had nowhere to go and gave him bud from the plants we just harvested and processed.

I called "Laird Greene" on the phone while we stood there and it wasn't 5 minutes before he was there with the 12 gauge. As he stood at the door in his boxers and nothing more, Chester said adamantly, "Hey man...someone's framing me. I didn't do it."

"Really..."

I took the keys to the vehicle LG drove there and left them both there to hash it out while I went back and got the muddy flip flops I found along the way. In the sole of those sandals were the perfect muddy imprints of Chester Ballard's feet.

Took them back to Chester's and showed them. "Come on, Chester-ella. Slip your foot into one of these and PROVE they're NOT YOURS!" He knew he was had at that point. The prints in the shoes matched his feet. Hell, I knew those sandals when I found them. He'd worn them over here just the day before. And he still denied he did it, saying, "If I had them, I'd give them to you."

Of course they weren't in the house, in the barn, in the henhouse, in the treetops....nowhere on the property. It's not his property, he's only crashing there temporarily, so I'm not surprised. Interestingly, he helps at least 4 other growers in the area, all of them having suffered a similar loss this season.
Incriminating, huh.

We didn't hurt him but we did give him an ultimatum to bring back our plants. I already know we're not going to get them back from that tweaking scumbag.

I hate tweakers.

I Love Hose And Pumps, I'd LOVE to be taught how to indoor hydro and would be honored to learn from you. I have 5 gallon buckets, air pumps and air stones (ummm...I'm a koi kichi, so I've got lots of that kind of stuff), and a block of oasis foam on hand (yeah, I do floristry too). Is there any chance I can use budded cuttings from this ruined sativa plant that are recovering in the water right now?A friend has a sodium vapor in the red spectrum that I can borrow if need be. Other than that, I have three 4' flourescent fixtures that I can use if they'll work.

Rangerdanger, I'm a big believer in karma, and LG and I are real pacivists, so violence goes against the grain (though LG is right on the verge of it--he worked so hard making those plants the best they could be so we could have some things like an economical car, firewood to keep us warm in the winter, clothes school and art supplies for his 10 year old daughter...all of that swept away in one fell swoop by someone he brought here under the cloak of friendship). I'd like to let this go, but I don't know if he will. It's like being caught between the proverbial Scylla and Charibdes--if we don't do anything, we'll have to live in a paranoid state because this guy will still be able to come here and rip us off or burglarize the place. But if we do beat the living lights out of that guy to get what's left of the plants back it lowers us to that level of mindset and sullies our souls. Not to mention it perpetuates the eye for an eye thing, which is like a trail of endless dominoes once the first one is tipped.

This whole situation sucks.

This area used to be the place where you could leave your keys in your car in front of the market, engine running, and no one would dream of stealing it. At the most someone would reach in and turn the engine off if they thought it was going to overheat or to just save the owner gas. (has happened to me) But in the past 10 years immigrants from Los Angeles have been moving up here--mostly released tweaking felons--and things have changed for the worse. I'd give anything to go back to the coast where I was born and raised and leave this infernally hot flatland forever behind. My 15 acres are long ago paid for and it would suck to have to sell and abandon it to make a big down payment on the way overpriced coast, having to make payments again. But I can't stand this.

Anyway, thanks you two for listening to my rant. Hose n'Pumps, teach me. I'll start this very day if you will.

LG

 

I have no other advice than to find the cunts and burn their goodamn fucking house down!

 

Well, the attempt at saving that branch of buds was largely unsuccessful, but let me tell you the end of the story about the rip off...

...the truck I found the remnants of my plants in mysteriously got all of it's glass pulverized (Wow! Did you see how far that side view mirror flew at the end of that aluminum baseball bat?), every tire flattened and the body has wall to wall dents. It is a total wreck and the ripoff lost it entirely as it was parked at a home where he was staying and was thrown out of when it was found he'd ripped us off. Towed it was to the junkyard. It was a 2002 Ford F250. Bummer for him.

Every local grower was notified of the theft and this particular community WON'T put up with him at all--he's persona non grata with everyone that grows weed around here and has been on the ass-kicking end of things every time he shows his face in public. Nowhere is safe for this guy now and he's being forced out of the neighborhood. He's homeless now.

But the BEST NEWS IS THIS: my dear and future hubby and I are trimming for the BEST medicinal grower here and earning far more buds than we even produced that was ripped off, and some of the most incredible strains I've ever tasted or grown! Yep, we have here now some of the best Blowfish, Holland's Hope, Aphrodite, and Hawaiian, so we have been taken care of in the most miraculous way and winter is no longer a looming catastrophe for us!

Rangerdanger and I Love Hose and Pumps, you're right. Karma has taken care of us (and him!) and this has turned into a blessing in disguise. My undying thanks to the med grower who has taken us under his wing and helped us in such a generous way. I will never forget such kindness....

 

I'm jazzed for you LG.

A perfect example of how bad Kharma can punish and good Kharma can reward.

Back in the esrly 90's my house got broken into and someone cut the main cola's off 2 dozen plants, just a few days from finishing, while I was out for the night. That was a commercial grow and the $$ was earmarked for a new roof for my dad's house.
It took me about 15 minutes to figure out who did it.
The only person that knew I had a grow who wasn't a good good friend. He knew because I bought some grow equip. from him.

He was a neighbor who most of the time was ok, I let him look upstairs from time to time.
I always smoked him out whenever he came over. Then he started asking for a joint to go. Then a couple of joints to smoke out with his friends. Then a couple more cause he was going to a party, or away for the weekend with his g/f.
It got to be a real drag and I finally put an end to the "to go" part when I found out he was selling some of the weed I had given him.

Anyway he waited until my plants were ready and he knew I was out for the evening. My security was lax because I have a big dog, but because E. is a neighbor and came over often, my dogs didn't bark or prevent him from coming in.
Plus another neighbor saw him on my prop. when I was gone.
And a mutual friend told me that all of a sudden E. had a lot of fresh weed for sale, a fact which E. hid from me.

I could have started a range war but that's not my style.
The first thing I did was one day soon after when he was in his front yard puting new tires on his truck (tires bought with $$ he made from selling my weed no doubt). I let him see me loading my grow equip. in my van. He came over and asked what was up and I told him I gave up growing since I'd been ripped off.
That night I snuck it back in, and upgraded my security situation.
And from that point forward whenever he stopped by or called I told him I was on my way out the door or was too busy to talk.
I cut off almost all contact with him.
He moved a few months later and moved in with the woman he married shortly thereafter, and thru his cousin I found out that he ripped off his landlord's backyard grow and got his ass kicked, and evicted.
I talk to E's cuz from time to time and he's mentioned E. several times.
The woman he married is an anti-pot major-league bitch. Even though she makes A WHOLE LOT of money she insists he work a hard job and he has to turn his paycheck over to her and she gives him about $10/week spending $$. She bought him a cell phone and pager so she can keep tabs on him.
He has no other choice but to obey her because he has no friends (he's ripped them off) and most of his family want nothing to do with him because he's ripped them off too.
And I couldn't be happier for him.
As far as I'm concerned it's just punishment for what he did to me. And I didn't have to lift a finger, he did it to himself.

 

Congrats on the trimming work LG. Karma has truly dealt with both your situations, pretty thorougly imo !!!