Growing My Own Tobacco (for fun).

[onepyrotec]

@ Ravenwolf, depends were you are located. If you are in the North, you may be able to still get a mid-sized crop but not fully matured with flowers & seed pods.
Be it this year or next year, send me a PM when you want to buy seeds. :wink:

 

[northernneil]

Depends how far North. I'll be starting germination this week, but I cannot transplant outside until June 1st, as we usually get a freak snowfall at the end of May. I was able to get full flowers and seeds this way, but my plants never exceeded 3.5' tall. That is just the nature of the beast when growing tobacco in Northern Climates.

 

[edvard]

I have wanted to try this. My lady can make anything grow and she'd gladly grow a tobacco plant. The curing is what seems daunting. That would be all up to me. Here in AZ, there are two wild tobacco plants that grow all over. These are some of the original Native American plants that they would use. I looked them up and was disappointed to find these are really high in Alkaloids and potentially dangerous. The Native Americans would cut them it seems with herbs and other stuff. I have two grown in my yard, one is the size of a small tree. Apparently the domesticated strain we all smoke it widely different and less potent. I would like to try it once just for fun, but I would have to find a really good curing for this stuff, and a cheap cob to puff it from as I'm pretty sure it will be vile.

 

[jitterbugdude]

Growing tobacco is easy. If you can grow tomatoes, you can grow tobacco. Most tobaccos will bloom at about 60 days after being transplanted. You start harvesting the leaves about 3 weeks after the plants blossom. Curing - most people confuse this with fermenting. Curing is simply hanging the leaves or stalks in a barn, shed or basement and allowing them to slowly dry to a brown color. This takes about 4 to 6 weeks. Fermenting is taking the cured leaves and storing them in an envirnment that is about 120 degrees and 60-70% humidity. Fermenting is not an exact science, anything near 120F/70 humidity will work. You do not have to ferment your leaves. All fermentation does is speed up the aging process. 4 weeks of fermenting will equal about 1 year of naturally aging. If you don't want to build a chamber, just let your leaves hang somewhere for 6 months to a year. Also, there are quite a few varieties that can be smoked as soon as they are cured. Most Turkish fall into this category as well as Big Gem (a Virginia), Silver River and many more.
Probably the best website by far to learn about everything related to tobacco is the "Fair Trade Tobacco" forum.
You can even buy plants from some of the forum members if you want to plant now and do not have any seedlings started.
They also hve a very active seed exchange program with over 200 different varieties.
Myself, I'm very partial to Turkish and grow about 6 different varieties.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Jitterbug, that's awesome to hear that fermenting is only a shortcut and not a necessity. Now I know that you don't need a dedicated building with a heater running for months on end.
My Canadian summer sounds just long enough to get something off a transplant. Of course we have northern varieties already, and I have to wonder if Ravenwolf wouldn't be better off getting something similar.

I'm not going to try growing anything this year, but it's nice to know it can be done.

 

[edvard]

Found this harvesting and curing (not fermenting)method on Yahoo. Traditional Muskogee, I thought might be of interest. I wondered about the name longbottom.
amanda the creek answered 5 years ago

To harvest tobacco, the Muskogee would first "top" the tobacco plants by removing the top where the flowers would bloom out leaving the plants with extra energy to make the bottom leaves longer (long bottom). After about one moon cycle (28 days) we would harvest the rest of the plant by cutting the stalks with a bone knife and take the harvested stalks (with leaves still attached) to an unlit smoke house. The tobacco would be hung in the smoke house by spikes or hooks made of bone or wood.
The smoke house is likened to what many people use to smoke or cure meat, fish, vegetables or fruit.
We would let the tobacco wilt slightly in the smoke house for another moon cycle (28 days) before we would cure and dry the leaves. The leaves stay green though, our Native plant varieties are different from the "eastern" varieties.
To cure the leaves, we would use an indirect "wet" wood smoke (cypress works the best) and to add flavor and color we would add wild cherry or wild plum wood to the smoke - curing could take from 6 hours to 2 days depending on the desired flavor and moisture content of the tobacco.
To dry the leaves, we would use and indirect "dry" wood smoke from oak or hedge and we would start the drying process for 6 hours to 2 days - after 2 days we would let let the smoke (fire) die and allow the tobacco to dry naturally.

Source:

It should be noted that different tribes had different ways of curing and drying tobacco. Tobacco was also seen differently by different tribes; some tribes saw tobacco as a sacred thing only to be used by the shamans/medicine men or chief. Some tribes used tobacco as a type of currency. Some tribes used tobacco only religiously or ceremoniously. Some tribes used tobacco constantly.
For nearly every tribe/nation tobacco was seen as a gift from our Creator.