Growing My Own Tobacco

[paddypiper]

Thought I would try my hand at growing my own tobacco. I started with 176 plants, which was due to an accident on my part, and lowered that to 6 plants by the time I transplanted to my garden. Just trying out Virginia for this year but also have some burley seeds I might try next year. As soon as I figure out how to post pictures on here I'll show off how they are coming. And I'll use this to keep a bit of a log of how this goes.

 

[woopigpiper]

176 down to 6. That was quite the initial accident, eh? Haha

 

[jitterbugdude]

Good luck! I guess you know to snip the suckers and the flower buds, spray for aphids and hornworms and bag any plants you want to save seed from. Unless you flue cure your Virginia it will taste more like a mild Burley.
Do tell... how do you go from 176 plants to 6?

 

[jpmcwjr]

Photos?
Once your photos are on a photo hosting site (such as Imgur.com; Photobucket; Postimage; Dropbox, etc.), or on virtually any site, select the full image, then Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) on the image itself, then choose copy image location. Now paste that URL (the full web address, which should end in .jpg) into the IMG box in the reply window of the thread you're posting to.

 

[nevadablue]

Yes, pics please. My friend here (high desert country) grew some HUGE plants two years ago. Amazed me that it could work so well here.

Watching...

 

[paddypiper]

I spent a good four or five months researching everything I thought I would need to know from start to finish. But judging from my seedling mishap going from research to practice isn't always that easy.

I still can't get pictures to work (I'm on my phone). Isn't there a photo album on this forum?

 

[paddypiper]

Hopefully this works. This should be a picture of two of my plants. I wasn't sure what to expect when growing tobacco so I have two plants in full sun, two in partial shade, and two growing indoors more as a backup. These are the ones in full sun.
http://pipesmagazine.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/album/16553/img_1232-600x450.jpg
EDIT: Well that didn't work properly.

 

[fitzy]

 

[fitzy]

Yeah just click on that IMG button at paste the URL like I did above.

 

[jpmcwjr]

And if you delete the -600x450, you'll get the full sized image. (Have to include the dash -, as well as the numbers, leaving no spaces.)

 

[paddypiper]

I did not realize that was an actual button. Thanks guys for your help.

jpmcwjr how did you rotate the picture? Or did it do it automatically?

 

[jpmcwjr]

I did nothing about rotation. Just got the URL from your URL and removed the size limitation.

 

[paddypiper]

I guess it changes it to fit then.

 

[paddypiper]

Here's a picture of when the seeds just started to sprout.

 

[paddypiper]

And here's before transplanting. Only the six seperate plants were kept.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Good illustrations- hope they're in the ground now and doing well. Where are you located?

 

[paddypiper]

I posted earlier that four are in the ground and two are in pots indoors as backups if the others fail. And I live in Ontario.

 

[mso489]

You might get some air dried leaf out of this that will smoke. It's not easy to grow good tobacco well, and to cure it and process it is a project. Probably like gardening, some folks have a natural inclination and others not. In any case, I think it would make the price of a tin of tobacco, or a baggie of bulk blend, seem well worth the price. However, if you got it down, you could have a nice regular supply of home leaf. Good luck! Let Forums know how it works out. Incidentally, people always associate the mid-South U.S. with the tobacco crop, but cigar leaf wrapper tobacco is a staple crop of Connecticut, where they have actual winters.

 

[cosmicbobo]

@mso489 I used to smoke Connecticut Club Cigars, all natural. Long time ago. Not around anymore. Very smooth at a box every three days.

Cosmo

 

[paddypiper]

Oh trust me I know what an actual winter is like mso489. I just thought I would give this a try after seeing other posts both on this forum and other forums of people growing their own tobacco. I think my biggest hurdle as far as actually growing it goes will be the shorter time I'll have to grow it. It's just starting to get warm enough to have a proper garden and more than likely it will be a sudden drop in temperature late August to early September like last year. As far as curing and processing the leaf goes I haven't decided on which route I want to take yet. I've seen a few different methods for home grown tobacco, but most likely I will air cure and then move onto a homemade kiln. I've also changed my mind a few times so far though so who knows what I'll end up doing.

If anybody has any input I'd very much like to hear it because this is mostly a learning experience for me.