Homegrown Burley 64?

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Piping Rooster

Can't Leave
Jun 29, 2022
398
2,065
Champa Bay
So I ordered a 1/4gram of seed to try my hand at growing tobacco and I'm regretting not reading up more on varieties that are better suited to home growing. From what I've gathered Burley is harsher when homegrown due to the limitations of curing methods.
Has anyone here grown this variety and cured it with any success? I'm in central florida where it's pretty humid for most of the year so I was planning on curing it inside my house and not the garage.
Now I'm thinking of getting some chimney pipe and connecting it to the chimney of my bbq smoker to connect a metal box of sort to it and try and do a flue cure on it. What are your thoughts?
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,762
13,785
Humansville Missouri
There are many types of tobacco seeds and every commercial seed type is good.

There are nearly countless YouTube videos on how to raise and cure tobacco.

What’s difficult is curing and aging good tasting tobacco. Commercial pipe tobacco is a manufactured product.

You can buy eight 12 ounce bags, or 96 ounces, six pounds, of excellent commercial premium pipe tobacco made by Lane under the brand name Smoker’s Pride with a wide variety of flavors,,,for about $100.

ED8048B2-67A8-4A8E-B26A-C857213BFB96.jpeg

Every old timer I talked to fifty years ago gave up home grown tobacco for “store bought” before World War One.

A friend of mine tried raising some tobacco about ten years ago and gave me several hands.

I aged it until it looked good.

I liked corn silks better, I tried fifty years ago.:)
 

Ahi Ka

Lurker
Feb 25, 2020
6,518
31,465
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
I haven’t grown that variety but it sounds like a good choice, that yields well and cures easily. I think it’s what you would call a white stemmed burley.

As for the fire/flue cure. No. You are better off looking into making a kiln to ferment/sweat the leaf for 6 weeks after you have air cured it.

I normally stork my burley plants and hang them whole to cure, this takes longer. Given your environmental conditions, you might have better success priming your leaves as they mature and air curing them individually. This is faster, and hopefully means less chance of mould from the high humidity.

If you do decide to build a kiln, and you find your garage/house doesn’t work well for air curing, you could also use the kiln as a curing box.

My kiln is an old fridge, a crock pot, two computer fans, a plug in temperature/humidity controller and a bunch of blankets for insulation. Not the best, but I used what I had on hand. The only thing I paid for was the controller, and it was ready to go as is.
 

You do not want to attempt to flue cure a burley. It just won't do anything to a burley. I have been growing tobacco for seven or eight years now. Burley is almost the easiest, just under Orientals, which is absolutely the easiest. However, even burley has a slight learning curve, slight.
There are many videos on YouTube, and even a whole forum for homegrowers at Fair Trade Tobaccos.

I make mine the easy way. I just dry mine and make twists, and then I use crockpots to turn them into a cavendish of sorts. You will have to do something to take the edge off of it. All tobacco is either fermented, color cured, cavendish'd, aged or something to make it more palatable.

I wish jitterbugdude was still on here. He was the best at answering these types of questions. He got me off to my start with growing. I think he may still be a moderator at the fair trade forum.

If you have a specific question, I might be better at answering those types... if I know the answer, or know someone who might know the answer.
Good luck. It's not hard.
 

Homer

Starting to Get Obsessed
Aug 7, 2020
256
765
43
Finland
You do not want to attempt to flue cure a burley. It just won't do anything to a burley. I have been growing tobacco for seven or eight years now. Burley is almost the easiest, just under Orientals, which is absolutely the easiest. However, even burley has a slight learning curve, slight.
There are many videos on YouTube, and even a whole forum for homegrowers at Fair Trade Tobaccos.

I make mine the easy way. I just dry mine and make twists, and then I use crockpots to turn them into a cavendish of sorts. You will have to do something to take the edge off of it. All tobacco is either fermented, color cured, cavendish'd, aged or something to make it more palatable.

I wish jitterbugdude was still on here. He was the best at answering these types of questions. He got me off to my start with growing. I think he may still be a moderator at the fair trade forum.

If you have a specific question, I might be better at answering those types... if I know the answer, or know someone who might know the answer.
Good luck. It's not hard.
I thought that I could try to grow some pipe tobacco next summer.
What type of tobacco do you think would be easiest to grow, dry and ferment (fermenting in glass jars)?
I have now ordered virginia to start with.
 
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shermnatman

Lifer
Jan 25, 2019
1,030
4,862
Philadelphia Suburbs, Pennsylvania
You guys who are growing are AWESOME!

I love this thread!

I don't have the gumption to even attempt this, so I will just bow from the ankles in humble reverence to your growing projects.

One thing I've already learned from this thread: I like pictures of newly-born tabak plants, much better then I like being shown pictures of other people's babies! :LOL:

Please keep the pics coming and keep this thread alive! - Sherm Natman