Mexico’s Largest Marijuana Crop Ever Destroyed

Yes this is a marijuana crop in Mexico about 200 miles south of San Diego, California. It looks like some solar energy plant or something. 300-acres full of 120 tonnes marijuana worth up to $160 million. Lenny said he would love to be there when thy burn. I agree 100% with that as well. It was discovered by Mexican soldiers while patrolling the area. Only six men were arrested for this massive grow operation.  The picture below shows the decent size housing area the six men lived in. What a life that would be? Take care of 120 tonnes marijuana plants all day, everyday. Hit the jump for some amazing pictures of the bust. Spotted on MSN’s PhotoBlog.

http://hailmaryjane.com/mexicos-largest-marijuana-crop-ever-destroyed/#more-38821

The Male Plant with Jorge Cervantes

This week we’re going to check in with Jorge Cervantes; world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation. Jorge has over 30 years of expert cannabis growing knowledge and hands-on experience. He is also the author of several books and DVDs including the infamous Marijuana Horticulture: Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible. Jorge shows us the male cannabis plant dispersing pollen up close in this video. If you grow from seed or are curious about male plants and breeding, this video should be of particular interest to you. Check it out!

http://www.hailmaryjane.com

Build A Stealth Grow Box For Less Than $150

This post was written by the HMJ Grow Expert ThisBuds4You, Click here to read more by this author

Howdy fellow HMJane-ers! Welcome to your FIRST stealth grow installment with ME, ThisBuds4You!!! I will show you how I made a STEALTH chest of drawers (dresser) for less than $150 and YOU CAN TOO. In 3 months you will be puffin’ on your own homegrown for less than the cost of a half ounce of herb. A little know how, a couple tools and a few items from your neighborhood hardware supplier and you’ll be growing in no time! This box should produce 5-6 ounces of A-Quality bud every grow cycle (60 days). This box also uses only 300 watts of power, about the same amount as a standard desktop computer.

Details about this dresser

It took 2 -8 hour days to complete this grow box. This dresser is comprised of 2 growing chambers, 1 for flowering your buds and the other for keeping your mother plant and young clones. The mother plant and clones are kept under 24-18 hours of light and your flowering plants are under 12 hours of light. I used 250 actual watts of power in the flowering chamber. This should give us around 5-6 ounces of bud every grow cycle (60 days) depending on the strain, nutrients, grow medium, etc. I will get into nutrients, caring for your plants, etc in future articles. Alright, enough talk, lets get growing!!!

 

 

Here are a few tools you will need:

Tools Needed for the job

Drill & Drill bits (standard sizes)
Jigsaw
2″ hole saw drill bit
Phillips Screwdriver
Rubber mallet or hammer
Staple Gun & Staples
Tape Measure
Sharpie Marker
Carpenter’s Knife
White caulk, NOT CLEAR
Scissors
Sandpaper
Wood Glue (not necessary, but nice to have)

If you don’t have all the tools, BORROW THEM FROM YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY! If they ask you why you need them, make up some bullshit! I didn’t want to spend $20 on a hole saw drill bit so I borrowed it, just ask!

Supplies you will need to complete your box:
Dresser – $30
6′x10′ of Panda film – $10
1 – 4′x2′ 0.25″ MDF or Hardboard (I prefer MDF) – $4.50
9 Ceramic light fixtures – $11.43
About 8 ft of lamp cord – FREE
3 standard plugs (for lamp cord) – FREE
Duct fan (I used a 6″ but a 4″ is also sufficient) – $16.00
3 – 120mm computer fans – $13.50
2 – 80mm (standard) computer fans – FREE
1 standard computer power supply & tester – Power supply FREE, Tester – $12.00
9 CFL bulbs (I used a mix of 42 and 23 watt bulbs) – $35.00
2 Hinges – $2.00
2 Magnetic Closures – $3.00
1 power strip – $2.47
1 piece of plexi glass 3mm thick – FREE

1 thermometer – $10.00

2 timers – $8.00

Misc items (not necessary but nice to have)

8 door/cabinet pulls (not necessary but a very nice touch) – $10

1 carbon scrubber (i got the smallest one CAN FILTER makes) – $39.00 if you are concerned about odor, this is a MUST

Money Saving Tips

1. Re-purpose the wood from inside the dresser! I got an old ass dresser that was probably hand-built by some old pioneer and I was able to reuse a lot of the wood. I only had to purchase 1 new piece of wood (the MDF) for the back door.

2. Get an old junked computer and use the fans and power supply from that, you can probably find one for free, I did.

3. Check the free section of craiglist for dressers, computers, etc. If you can’t find free ones, pretty sure you can find cheap ones. I got my dresser for $30.

4. Don’t pay for lamp cords! Find some old ass lamps in the garbage, free section of craigslist or whatever and use those. Just cut them off from the lamp and wa la!

Disassembling the dresser
Take great care in taking the dresser apart. We took time taking it apart and ended up being able to reuse most of the wood from the dresser. We took apart the drawers and used the bottoms to make the front face that the drawer fronts attached to. We also used the bottom of the drawers for the floors of our new grow box.

Now, I’m not going to get into too much detail from here on out; the pictures are pretty self-explanatory. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to fire away!

The Beginning
Here’s the dresser untouched

Dresser untouched

First, we took all the drawers out and began to take those apart with a rubber mallet

Drawer dis-assembly

Drawer dis-assembly

Here’s the dresser completely gutted (except for the top shelf, I left that in so we could mount the exhaust fans and run the power through there)

Dresser gutted

Then we attached one of the drawer bottoms to the front of the dresser, so we would have something to screw the drawer fronts to

Dresser with support board

Then we attached the drawer fronts with the new drawer handles/pulls

Dresser with drawers attached

Once that was completed we cut a 6″ hole on the inside top shelf we left in and we also added a partition wall in the middle with a hole cut out for a 120 mm fan. We also cut holes in the top of our flowering chamber for the 2-120mm fans we will mount there. Be sure to run caulk around the edges on the inside of the dresser so we don’t have an issue with light leaks. I also cut 4 pieces of wood the same depth as the dresser and screwed them into the bottom. These are going to support our new floors.

Boards mounted, holes cut

Partition wall with hole cut

Next, make your floors from the scrap drawer bottoms. I drilled holes in them with a 2″ hole saw bit for air flow. Air is your best friend in these small spaces! I lined the floor of the veg room with panda film, I’m making a separate tray to place the plants in the flowering area so I did not line that floor with panda film

Vegetative chamber floor

Flowering chamber floor

Next, line the entire interior of the dresser with panda film and install the floors

Dresser lined with Panda film

Now, time for the lights. I daisy-chained all the lights together and mounted them to some scrap 1/2″ board I had laying around. You can use pieces of the dresser drawers for this also.

Ceramic fixtures

Lamp cord plug

Break time with Sweetwater 420 and Mandala Hashberry

Break Time

Now for the fans, I used 3-120 mm fans. I’m using 2 in the ceiling to exhaust hot air out of the flowering chamber (the lights will be sealed off by a piece of plexi glass), and 1 fan will be blowing air from the flowering chamber into the veg chamber. I powered these fans with a PC power supply. I got a power supply tester so the power supply would power the fans.

120mm fans

Power supply with tester

Now, mount the fans and the lights. I mounted 2-80 mm computer fans in the corners of the flowering box, air flow is our best friend in these small spaces!

Lights and fans mounted

Exhaust fans for lights in flowering chamber

PC fans mounted, exhaust fans for flowering chamber lights

Hinges attached to door

Hinges attached

Magnetic closures attached

Vegetative chamber up and running!!!

Flowering chamber with plexi glass installed
Lights on!

Flowering chamber with plexi glass installed

Door installed on back of dresser, still need to get a piece of hardboard to attach across the top of the back…

Back of dresser

Grow box is done!

Front of dresser, DONE!

Any questions, feel free to fire away. Overgrow the world!!!

TB4U

http://hailmaryjane.com/build-a-stealth-grow-box-for-less-than-150/

Superfast Computers Triggering Botched Marijuana Grow Raids

Photo: Bitcoin Miner

Turns out, looking only at electric usage from a residence, the consumption for bitcoin mining won’t look much different from a marijuana grow-op. Cue clueless cops.

You don’t have to be growing marijuana to get raided for it. At least one Bitcoin miner has been raided by police because unusually high power usage led them to suspect he was growing marijuana, according to unconfirmed reports on Monday.

The tip comes from an IRC chat captured by blogger Mike Esspe, though there are no corroborating details, reports Jerry Brito of Techland.

Bitcoin is the anonymous virtual currency that uses distributed computing power to validate online coins. “It’s like gold mining, except that instead of digging, a miner uses cryptographic math,” reports Techland.

Screen capture: Mike Esspe

Does this mean, that with the growing number of bitcoin miners, courts will stop issuing warrants based on energy bills? Not bloody likely.

Like clandestine indoor marijuana growing operations, Bitcoin mining uses large amounts of electricity and runs up big power bills. It does this because it employs super-fast computers.

High power consumption has often alerted police to marijuana growing operations and has thus led to busts.

“The Canadian town of Mission, B.C. has a bylaw that allows the town’s Public Safety Inspection Team to search people’s homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day,” according to the blog Bitcoin Miner.

Though a typical mining rig will consume only a fraction of that amount, Bitcoin miners are adding capacity, and with multiple rigs, more and more miners are exceeding the level which triggers police interest, according to the blog.

Residents have been charged a $5,200 inspection fee – even if no marijuana or signs of a grow operation are found, reports Cam Tucker at the Delta Optimist.

Some Mission residents who feel their rights have been violated by the arbitrary searches, and have begun a class-action lawsuit against the District of Mission in B.C. Supreme Court.

There had already been speculation that mining Bitcoins will bring unwanted and misdirected attention from the police.

“I’m still waiting for the first bitcoin grow-op raid,” a Bitcoin mining pioneer had commented on an IRC channel back in January.

Increasingly ubiquitous supercomputing could lead to more and more false positives, not just for Bitcoin miners, but for hardcore gamers too, as well as anyone running video rendering farms or web servers from home, according to Techland.

“It will be interesting to see how courts will adapt to such uses when interpreting reasonable suspicion standards,” Brito writes.

Does this mean, that with the growing number of Bitcoin miners, courts will stop issuing warrants based on energy bills? Not bloody likely.

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/05/superfast_computers_triggering_botched_marijuana_g.php#more

17 Pounds of Marijuana Growing in Man’s Basement

OSWEGO — Oswego police say they found more than 17 pounds of marijuana growing in a man’s basement at a home where four young children lived.

Police initially responded to 229 Munn Street around 10:47 p.m. Friday for reports of a domestic dispute. When they got there, police say, they smelled a strong marijuana-like odor.

Police say Shawn Hort, 35, admitted to possessing marijuana. Police say a search of the home turned up an indoor marijuana grow in the basement. Police say they found 175 marijuana plants along with high density lights, two separate air filtration systems and all necessary hydroponics containers, chemicals and pumps. Investigators also say they found a large quantity of dried marijuana packaged in several different containers.

Hort is charged with criminal possession of marijuana, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful growing of cannabis. He was arraigned in Oswego City Court and sent to the Oswego County Correctional Facility in lieu of $1,000 cash bail.

If you have any information, call Oswego police at (315) 342-2283. You can also remain anonymous and call the tip-line at (315) 342-8131 or send an email to: crimewatch@oswegony.org.

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=603888

“Mellow” Alligator Guarded Marijuana Stash in Southern California

Police in Riverside County, California recently made a raid in which they seized 2,300  cannabis plants that were guarded by a “very, very mellow” 50 pound American alligator. The marijuana grow is worth an estimated $1.5 million, and although gators are illegal to own in California, authorities say they are becoming popular pets.

This doesn’t seem like much of a security system, especially a “mellow” gator (maybe he was sampling his owner’s product). But even an aggressive gator can only be so fast and easy to kill for someone who really wanted that weed. More than likely this guy – who was released on $100,000 bail – enjoyed the novelty of having a gator on his property as opposed to a sophisticated security system.

I guess having a four-foot alligator is cool, but if you’re serious about protecting $1.5 million in cannabis, some cameras and locks might be a better investment.

http://the420times.com/2011/03/mellow-alligator-guarded-marijuana-stash-in-southern-ca/

Pot Growing Trailer Stolen From High Times Medical Cannabis Cup

A pot-growing trailer known as the “GrowBot” was stolen from a medical marijuana
trade show in Denver over the weekend, and the owner on Tuesday offered a $5,000
reward for its return.

Greg Childre, who builds custom trailers for a variety of crops at his Georgia manufacturing plan, said the trailer was stolen from the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup in Denver late Sunday night. The 28-foot long “GrowBot” trailer was driven out of the trade show parking lot in full view of security guards, Childre said.

Parking lot surveillance cameras captured the crime, but did not detect the license plates of the Dodge truck that hitched up the trailer and drove off, he said. Childre told Reuters the trailer is computerized, and is stocked with grow lights and  security devices. “Anything you need to grow in a controlled environment,” he said. “It has all the bells and whistles.” Childre said he builds the trailers for other crops, including mushrooms and blueberries, but most of his business is derived from the medical marijuana industry. The trailer is valued at $50,000, and there was no marijuana inside the vehicle, he said.

http://hempbeach.com/pot-growing-trailer-known-as-the-growbot-stolen-from-high-times-medical-cannabis-cup/

Grandmother Arrested In Drug Raid

Velma Mullaney, a grandmother in her sixties, could not believe her eyes.  It was shortly after 9 a.m.  and as many as 10 police officers and several police cars were outside her home near Castlegar, B.C.

The police told her that they believed she was operating an illegal indoor marijuana-growing operation on her 3-1/2 acre property, Ms.  Mullaney said Thursday in an interview.

She said she had a licence to grow 98 marijuana plants for medical purposes for herself and her partner.  The plants were in pots in two rooms at the back of a workshop on the property that her grandson used for his welding business.

At first she thought the officers would just count the plants and leave.  But the police refused to listen to her, she said.  “I told them we had permits to grow.  The officer just started yelling, ‘No, we did not.  We had way too many plants and I was going to jail,’ “

Police cut down the plants and tore out the lights, fans and thermostats.  “They basically wrecked everything,” Ms.  Mullaney said.  “What they didn’t take, they smashed.”

RCMP Corporal Debbie Postnikoff later confirmed that police came to Ms.  Mullaney’s home, but provided a dramatically different account of events.

Police came to the house at 9:55 a.m.  on Feb.  24 with a search warrant, Cpl.  Postnikoff said.  Based on evidence, police believed that Ms.  Mullaney was not in compliance with her permit to grow marijuana.

Police dismantled the grow operation as the number of plants exceeded what was authorized under the licence, Cpl.  Postnikoff said.  She declined to provide any details about the number of plants on the property or what was seized during the raid.

They found her eighteen-year-old grandson, Michael Millard, in the workshop, Cpl.  Postnikoff said.  He did not have a licence to grow the marijuana and was not authorized to maintain the plants.  Police found him “tending to the grow operation” and arrested him.

Ms.  Mullaney said her grandson had gone to the workshop to shut off the welding machinery when he saw the police.  “[The police] kicked the doors in and put a gun to his head.  They had him on the ground, on the floor, and handcuffed him.” His girlfriend was also arrested.

“Instead of checking to see if we really have too many plants, they just went ahead and did what they did,” Ms.  Mullaney said.  “It was ridiculous.  Everyone was just standing there and it would have only taken minutes to count them all.”

Ms.  Mullaney said she has arthritis and she uses marijuana to help her relax at night.  “Otherwise you are really, really uncomfortable, finding a way to get comfortable.” Her partner uses marijuana to control pain caused by a bad back, she said.

Health Canada issued her a licence for medicinal marijuana on Oct.  10, 2009.

Ms.  Mullaney was arrested for cultivating marijuana and trafficking.  RCMP are now consulting with federal Crown prosecutors about the charges that will be laid.

Ms.  Mullaney is also facing charges of cultivation of a controlled substance and possession for the purpose of trafficking as a result of a raid two years ago.  She and her former husband, Lyall Mullaney, were arrested on Jan.  8, 2009, after police seized 1,200 marijuana plants in various stages of growth.  A search of the home turned up prepackaged marijuana and some cash, a RCMP news release from 2009 states.  Their trial is scheduled to begin later this spring.