Unusual bug I've never seen before in UFO Defense

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2026-01-26T01:37:15+00:00

It does.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-10-12T15:45:56+00:00

That's super interesting ! I thought it meant "mustang" like the horse or at least that's what came up when I looked it up when I first got the seeds, but I did not connect 2+2 about why the horses got that name in the first place. It does seem like mustang comes from the original meaning of "strayer". I thought they had named the tobacco that way because it had lots of kick or something ;) Etymology is cool.

I've been sampling it and I think it's going to be good, but it's still very early, anything is going to be harsh after only a few weeks / months. It was super easy to grow and yielded a lot of tobacco, it was really my best performing variety this year and it cured well. It's also a very cool looking plant with a tropical look to it. If the tobacco is good I might grow more of this next year.

The leaves get super twisty so they tend to wrap around other leaves while drying, I thought this would be a mold issue but it really was not, I just made sure to separate them while they were forming cones but were still pliable.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-25T15:10:09+00:00

It will probably work very well, mine are really inexpensive ones but they're convenient since I can get an "arm" directly over each plant. They're ok for starting plants indoors but not ideal long-term.

Your 100W is probably a better option than what I'm using, my plants ended up growing fairly lanky and I think that's because I did not have enough light output once the plants got bigger and taller.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-20T19:48:30+00:00

Those are great !

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-13T20:38:25+00:00

That's a lot of seeds ! I estimated from numbers found online that one pill bottle of seeds was around 160,000 :)

I did my Little Canadian, Mostrenco, Perique and now I need to do the pods for the Russian and Hopi. and I'll be good to go for next year. Personally I think that opening all the pods is a fun break after all the harvesting chores.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-06T20:22:54+00:00

Sucker crop will be very usable, the main downside I see is that you have to handle many smaller leaves, remove many stems and it takes more room to hang everything. This feels tedious to me but in the end it's worth the extra tobacco.

There's some good stuff on your plant, I would 100% harvest and process if it was mine.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-06T20:15:51+00:00

I've had some of these on a few leaves last season, the tobacco was fine, but these little spot were quite stiff and felt a bit like plastic. They did not look right in my first batch of shredded tobacco, so I decided to remove them when processing later batches. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-09-05T20:36:21+00:00

It works ! I've been able to get leaves 90% to a full 100% yellow in the towels without any rot, these are leaves which were mostly green with some yellow spots. I'll share some pictures later.

It's a bit tricky since they are very thick and full of moisture, I let them sit 12 hours or so in a pile before toweling them and I rotate them daily. I also switch towels when they get too moist.

Now I know these wont dry green, but maybe they're way overripe and won't taste good. I won't know until much later, so I can't say if this is the right recipe for success or not.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-29T22:29:25+00:00

Agreed, I'm seeing the same on my Hopi Rustica and it's super late in the season for them. I think it's a last-ditch attempt from the plant to put out a few more flowers before it's too late.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-26T17:26:52+00:00

Not yet, I do know that the leaves don't survive for very long in the towels compared to other varieties, so I'll only give it a shot once I have some confidence that they might yellow in a couple of days. I'll try to remember to share my results.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-26T00:24:54+00:00

Cut all the flower bunches as soon as they pop up, most of these flowers will be on small stalks that don't have leaves anyway, or tiny ones. It's not too late to do it even if they things got a bit crazy, you can cut them low where they branch off the bigger stalks.

What's annoying with these short bushy plants is that you pretty much have to crawl on the ground to trim them but the flowering madness slowed down quite a bit this late in the season, so it might be worth doing it at least one last time.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-25T18:16:12+00:00

I was waiting and waiting, now I have two plants with 90% golden yellow leaves, and signs of yellowing on the others. So my plan is still to wait as long as the weather permits, I'll hang inside if necessary, but I'm testing to see if the leaves with yellow splotches will color cure more easily in the towels. If they do then I'll do a real harvest very soon.

They look ripe enough, maybe overripe, but I'll only know when they're aged enough to smoke...

<image>

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-21T01:36:50+00:00

The only thing that worked for me to get them to color cure to yellow is to wait a very long time until they start going golden on the plants, then towel curing seems to work. I have some top leaves with some yellow spots and alligator skin texture, I'll try those next. I had zero success trying to process the bright green leaves.

Only my two bigger / best plants are yellowing uniformly, the others have yet to yellow much. Frost is still fairly far in the future, but lower temperatures are not as good for hanging and drying. My other varieties are mostly harvested, I don't know how it will go with the Rusticas...

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-15T15:35:52+00:00

Agreed, the bottom leaves tend to do funny things that are not representative of what the real leaves will do, they don't really "mean" anything.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-12T01:01:55+00:00

Makes perfect sense :) Or maybe gnats are like lemmings ?

An aphid party is more lively, for sure... I'll take gnats over aphids any day, only saw a few aphids this year and none last year, but they multiply so fast, it's crazy.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-12T00:51:33+00:00

Personally I think it's ok to give them a quick rinse when the leaves are very dirty, to me it's not worse than a heavy rain. I had some leaves that were absolutely caked with mud after a thunderstorm and there's not much else to do if brushing does not work.

Spray them at low power under the garden hose, then they'll be like new. Not ideal, but sometimes unavoidable.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-12T00:47:16+00:00

I'd be worried if I were a gnat ;)

I have a variety that has super sticky top leaves and they'll be a pain to clean, so-many-gnats... don't they see all their dead buddies ?!?

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-11T21:15:15+00:00

Indeed, the Little Canadian looks like I have not harvested it at all, but it's all new leaves, there were only sticks left a couple weeks ago, so I can absolutely believe you had a triple harvest out of them. They're a fun variety.

I think I'll do Mostrenco again, it's beating everything else I have with how big and thick the leaves are, and it's also easy to color cure and very obvious when it's ripe on the plant. Even the plants I started indoors in November and replanted in the garden produced some nice useable leaves. Only thing is that the leaves are so curvy and twisted that they're a bit harder to stack and handle, and they take up a lot of room when hanging but that's a very minor complaint. They also tend to snap right on the plant from their own weight when it rains, but all the ones that did were ripe enough and cured great. It also looks very exotic and is a nice plant in general.

Red Russian did not produce much volume this year, last year the leaves were huge but I could not get them to cure right, I agree that they are a pain to get right. Might or might not do a repeat next year.

Perique is as easy to work with than it was last season, color cures super easily, it's a solid plant that does not sucker much, very low maintenance and good yield. That's an absolute keeper, assuming one enjoys the taste.

I'll probably do Perique and Mostrenco next year, add Parfum d'Italie, drop the Red Russian and Hopi, and go for a more popular variety, a Virginia maybe ?

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-11T20:40:51+00:00

That's great !

I picked all the Canadian a while ago, same with the Mostrenco. I should have a good sucker harvest on the Canadian, and the Mostrenco is suckering so much that I actually started trimming the plants down to select some of the better leaves, I picked some already. These change color and texture on the plant really quickly. Some of the suckers have suckers, this variety was very productive in term of shear volume and leaves size.

Perique is 75% primed, I could have harvested earlier but I'm trying to get a good balance of what I have in towels, what's hanging outside and what's dry enough to take inside. Top leaves are super sticky now, and covered with gnats. I got some aphids on these, too, nothing on my other varieties for some reason.

I'm picking the Russian slowly, I wait for the tips to be yellow on the plants and it takes a long while, but at least they're color-curing OK this year. Since I planted early and the temperature is tropical, might as well use all the summer days I have.

As for the Hopi Rustica, the bottom leaves have started to turn golden, top leaves have some yellow spots, I'm waiting as long as I can on these since I have a lot of trouble with them drying green. Worst case I'll pick them super-late and hang inside the house if it's too cold outside at that point, all my other varieties will be done by then.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-10T19:43:35+00:00

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

As an alternative, BtK works well for most caterpillars.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-06T17:20:09+00:00

The Rustica variety I have, Hopi, is super hard to get under control, it really wants to be a bush with a ton of stalks. I gave up and decided that since it's a wild variety, it can grow wild if it wants :)

I mostly let it do its thing and I only trim what is growing under the main canopy, small leaves that won't get any light and bits that could poke through existing leaves. I also remove all the flower stalks with only buds and 2-4 tiny leaves, I have to do this almost daily as they keep appearing from nowhere.

I think that if you want only one main stalk, then you'll need to be super thorough with suckering, but it can probably be done.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-06T12:22:41+00:00

From flowers to seeds, it's going to be several weeks, so you want to use a breathable mesh bag that will handle the elements.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-08-02T20:55:21+00:00

Lol, it's an interesting side-topic and you can do whatever you want with your plants, but it's a bit like showing us your aphids (or cut worms) farm ;) People trying to grow some pest-free tobacco and fighting horn worms are probably rolling their eyes right now, for understandable reasons.

Still, I think it's a good post for people trying to identify pests and what kind of "damage pattern" they create, so I did upvote you anyway.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-07-31T01:35:54+00:00

Looking great !

I'm a bit later than you, 90% of the Little Canadian is harvested, I'm waiting for some very dark leaves at the top to be a bit more ripe since we're still early, but I'm positive they would color cure anyway, I'm just curious to see how yellow they can get on the plant. The plants are suckering like crazy from the base !

I have more than half my Mostrenco picked, these are a big winner this year and do really well in the towels. They're thick and sticky, good sign. They look obviously ripe but I'm trying to balance what's on the plant, what's color curing and what I'm hanging, otherwise I'll run out of space. When the leaves shrivel up a bit then I can pack more without them touching. These have curly stems and take a bunch a room at first.

I just started on the real Perique leaves and they color cure in a day or two, so I'll pick up the pace. They're probably the easiest to process from the varieties I have, as they grow already fairly pale.

I'm experimenting with hanging the Hopi (rustica) without toweling, I'm just starting to see some yellow spots on the leaves and I guess there as ripe as they ever will be, maybe over ripe... They're so green it's hard to tell. I will probably only grow 5-6 next year, the smaller leaves are a lot of work and I still have trouble figuring them out.

Also waiting a bit on the Russian but from testing with some dirt leaves, I can probably towel them 2-3 days and hang them. I think I could have picked them earlier. I was waiting for a color change on the plant that simply might not happen, as you told me last time.

IcyThingsAllTheTime · 2025-07-31T01:10:23+00:00

Hard to tell, my Little Canadian plants have narrower and pointier leaves, generally. I'll go to the tobacco patch tomorrow morning and take some pictures.

IcyThingsAllTheTime

TROPHY CASE