A 74-year-old German farmer is in trouble with drug enforcement officials after he planted more than 1,000 marijuana plants by mistake.

The cannabis plants worried locals, who informed German police about the elderly Bavarian farmer’s unusual crop, reports CNBC. The police visited the man on Tuesday, who immediately used a tractor to destroy the plants upon learning what they were.

The man usually uses his one-acre field to grow potatoes but wanted to try sunflowers instead this year. When he couldn’t find sunflower seeds, he chose to use bird seed instead, according to The Local. Unfortunately for the elderly German farmer, the bird seed mix included sunflower seeds and cannabis seeds.

The man was disappointed when, instead of flowers, he got a crop of leafy green plants he couldn’t identify. When police gave him a brief botany lesson, he quickly apologized and destroyed the 10-foot tall weed plants. Police spokesman Stefan Brabetz stated:

“The friendly elderly gentleman was surprised at the strange plantsthat had grown next to the flowers but did not identify them as cannabis plants. The farmer promptly ploughed up the field with the tractor under the watchful eyes of the police.”

Brabetz added that, despite the elderly German’s apparent mistake as well as the fact that the type of cannabis was too weak to produce an intoxicating effect, the case will still be presented to a local prosecutor’s office. A judge will decide if formal charges should be filed or not because it is a crime to knowingly grow marijuana in Germany.

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