The 2015 Cosmic Crop

Last year, I had experimented with a few tobacco plants, but when I left town to go to a funeral in the late summer, the drought took most of the crop. This year, I have a stack of PVC, timer, fittings, and nozzles to put in my own irrigation for the whole garden.

I ordered a Dark Virginia, Virginia Gold, Del Gold, Izmir, and Rustica to give me a good selection. The goal is ten pounds, giving me a selection of Virginias, a Turkish, and the boldest burley known, which will give me what I am interested in cooking up into pipe tobacco. As someone who enjoys playing in the kitchen, I am anxious try different curing techniques to give me the perfect blends to suit my tastes.
I just thought that I would start this thread to share with you guys this year's experiments.



The seeds are teeny tiny. For my small raised bed style of gardening, I will probably only use 1/20th of the seed that I received to give me the ten pounds that I am shooting for.


I am using a small bonzai dish that I use for starting bonzai trees. This is small enough to start the seeds and it allows me to water them from the bottom up, without ever having to disturb the soil. The five different types are being seeded in small rows. Lora told me that this was my tobacco zen garden, ha ha. I need a small rake and hoe to tend these tiny things.


Here it is all covered in Saran Wrap and ready to sit in my window till the seeds germinate.
Anyways, I will add pictures as the garden progresses. Just sit back and enjoy watching our favorite plant grow. ::

Update:

All but the Turkish plants are hatching up nicely, all stretching and yawning from their teeny tiny embryonic journey into this world. But, I was warned that the Turks would take a few more days to hatch. The rustica was all johnny on the spot and breaking out, within just a day or so.
I've already spread some goat manure from our own Jackstraw and Bertha, tilled it in, and green peas are in the beds now. It will be quite a few more weeks till these get planted in the ground. But, the beds will be ready and waiting when they get old enough to hold their own in the garden. I've also went ahead and built up one more bed, so that I can attempt growing more than I had originally anticipated. I just hate wasting a good seedling.
Anyways, that's the update. Ain't they cute?

I spent many a Spring as a kid with cousins setting on a 2x10 board tied to the back of a tractor setting out tobacco and Falls hanging it. But, I am wanting to learn more about the process and get some homemade twists out of the experiment. You can grow any variety as far North as Canada to as far South as you want to go. Anywhere tomatoes grow, tobacco will grow, just 100 frost free days is all it needs. And, you can get seeds from anywhere, amazon.com to grow your own tobacco websites that are all over the innerwebs to you local co-op. I highly suggest people get to know their co-ops and Ag agents, even for just a small raised bed garden. They can be a wealth of knowledge and help.
We have a couple of other forum members who have already been very successful growing and curing their own also. There are also whole other websites with folks sharing information on all of this. I am still learning, so maybe they'll chime in also.
I played with blending my own. But, if you like Virginias and VaBurs and Orientals there's just not much to blending unless you have your own fresh leaves to process yourself. And, living by growing, raising, and hunting all of our own foods, it only makes sense for a pipesmoker on such a farm to give tobacco growing a whirl. So, here it goes...

Alabama, I have a home garden which is dead center of our rural little town, a farm down the road a little, and we've inherited some farmland in NC. We mainly farm for ourselves, but I also enjoy working the Saturday morning farmers market, just for kicks. The tobacco will crimp out some of my tomato and artichoke areas, but these last few winters have hurt most of my artichoke plants anyways.