One thing about growing your own, and I haven't, but it will make you entirely comfortable with what you pay for a tin of premium pipe tobacco. It's a bargain.
I Guess it's My Turn for a Grow Thread
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Or, it might just make you prefer your own tobacco over tinned.
I am so fascinated by the grow threads. Keep it up!
Seeing that some of you are growing Oriental varietals got me thinking... I know most Oriental leaf used in blending is not varietal-specific these days, but different types of sun-cured, Oriental leaves, all mixed together. So if you wanted a specific varietal for a home blending project, growing it or getting it from a grower might be your best option!
It is also too bad that very few farmers grow tobacco meant primarily for the pipe, because it would be awesome to see some farmers here in the US growing some of those varietals to make up for the reduced supply coming from Greece/Turkey/Macedonia...
Seeing that some of you are growing Oriental varietals got me thinking... I know most Oriental leaf used in blending is not varietal-specific these days, but different types of sun-cured, Oriental leaves, all mixed together. So if you wanted a specific varietal for a home blending project, growing it or getting it from a grower might be your best option!
It is also too bad that very few farmers grow tobacco meant primarily for the pipe, because it would be awesome to see some farmers here in the US growing some of those varietals to make up for the reduced supply coming from Greece/Turkey/Macedonia...
How long does sun curing take? Summers around here are short so not too much time to do it. What if it happens to be cloudy or rainy during the curing process?
What would happen if tobacco leaves are just hung indoors and left there for a few weeks?
I've read that people here in Finland used to grow Nicotiana Rustica in times when commercial tobacco was hard to get during the wars. I believe Rustica is the easiest to grow in colder climate.
If you live in a cold place, inside will be very dry. If you hang tobacco while it's green, you will risk having it dry green. That tastes bad and can't be fixed. But if you can create a space where it's more humid, 65-75%,then it's not an issue.
But! Another option is to pile the leaves in a cardboard box. This prevents them from drying green. It also hastens ripening (turning yellow) because it concentrates ethylene gas. You go through the leaves daily and make sure there's no wet or rotten spots. And leaf which is mostly yellow can be removed and hung up.
Leaf which is yellow can be dried at any rate so a warm and dry indoors is ok. Outside in Finland, like Edmonton, is humid in autumn. If it's not sunny enough, you can get mold but it happens slowly because of low temperatures. That's a risk you have to take. Freezing is not a problem if the tobacco is yellow. One option is to use a greenhouse or tent. A few degrees of heat decreases the relative humidity substantially.
All these factors affect the end product but don't ruin it. Just don't let it ďry green or rot in your cardboard box.
This is hard to say. Let's suppose it's early October and your plants are already half picked. The forecast says it's going to be a low of - 3°C. Tobacco freezes at - 2°C so you decide to pick everything despite the plants not quite being ready. Ideally, you would hang up the entire plant in a suitable shed which is around 70% humidity and between 70 & 90°F (sorry for switching to Fahrenheit, that's just how I think). This is be air curing, not sun curing.
But let's say you don't have this space, then you "pile cure" which is the box thing I mentioned.
Either way, once the leaves are yellow, you can put them in the sun.
In the middle of summer, you can sun cure in a week. Pick a leaf which is already yellow, hang it in the sun, bam. Done. But in the fall in a cold climate, this can stretch out to a couple months if you're picking leaf which isn't ripe out of necessity (freezing), and if you're curing it at low temperatures.
The lamina dries much faster than the stems. You can save a month, easy, by removing the stems (after the lamina is done)
My method last year since I moved and haven't built a curing shed yet, was to fire cure or sun cure it outside until the lamina is dried, then hang in the garage until the stems are dried. Sun curing was done in a narrow greenhouse with a black north wall. Fire curing was done with a brick fire pit, a box made with cement board, a temperature controller and computer fan to draw smoke.
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What’s the advantage of picking the leaves before they start to yellow on the stalk, and doing all of this? Is it flavor, or merely because the growing season is so short?
The reason why I do it is because so far, it has proven impossible to pull off an entire crop by priming before freezing temperatures arrive in Alberta. Remember, I live 500miles north of Great Falls Montana.
So what I mean is it's better than letting it freeze. I don't have enough experience and knowledge to know really what the biggest impact would be. If I could let it continue to grow, probably bigger leaves with less nicotine and protein, more sugar, and probably smoother?
Less nicotine? Interesting.
I like the idea of harvesting the whole stalk at one whack. But, I’ve just always felt that it was imperative to only pick them as they yellow.
I did do this under Jitterbug’s urging with my Semois, but I was so overwhelmed with so many leaves at once that most molded before I could get it processed. Clearly, if I do this again, I will need better planning.
Stalk curing unfortunately requires way more space than hanging leaves, and that corresponds to less ease in maintaining the environment. However, there is slightly more room on the low humidity side because the leaves can still draw some moisture from the stalk to avoid drying too fast.
I'll re-state explicitly what was said in an early reply and then affirmed by the ratio of helpful posts about curing vs growing:
Growing tobacco (getting plants to survive to maturity) is actually pretty easy. Most varieties take about as long to grow and need similar care - in terms of fertilizer and pests - as tomatoes. You WILL get tobacco leaves from your first year's crop.
Will they be the thickest, oiliest, sugariest, nicotiniest leaves that could possibly have been? Probably not. Encouraging any specific outcome with plants is the realm of professional farmers, gardeners, botanists, etc and still a crap shoot. But they will be tobacco and you will have every reason to be proud of yourself.
The curing of tobacco is the hard part. The environmental conditions _after_ the growing season is what kept tobacco a southern crop before technology. Having a month of hot days and humid nights in September/October makes passive curing much likelier to turn out.
But again, it's a matter of scale and degree. Will your leaves cure out to the sweetest, mellowest, auction-ready commercial quality commodity? Probably not. But as a hobby, having to take a more active role in curing is part of the reward structure.
The first bowl I smoked of tobacco I grew and cured myself was objectively terrible. And I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time I smoked it.
Best of luck to your this season!
Growing tobacco (getting plants to survive to maturity) is actually pretty easy. Most varieties take about as long to grow and need similar care - in terms of fertilizer and pests - as tomatoes. You WILL get tobacco leaves from your first year's crop.
Will they be the thickest, oiliest, sugariest, nicotiniest leaves that could possibly have been? Probably not. Encouraging any specific outcome with plants is the realm of professional farmers, gardeners, botanists, etc and still a crap shoot. But they will be tobacco and you will have every reason to be proud of yourself.
The curing of tobacco is the hard part. The environmental conditions _after_ the growing season is what kept tobacco a southern crop before technology. Having a month of hot days and humid nights in September/October makes passive curing much likelier to turn out.
But again, it's a matter of scale and degree. Will your leaves cure out to the sweetest, mellowest, auction-ready commercial quality commodity? Probably not. But as a hobby, having to take a more active role in curing is part of the reward structure.
The first bowl I smoked of tobacco I grew and cured myself was objectively terrible. And I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time I smoked it.
Best of luck to your this season!
My first couple attempts were terrible, and the tobacco never aged to a point where it was enjoyable. I was figuring it all out on my own. Once I became acquainted with the online community, things changed dramatically. The tobacco I grew in 2015 took aging in a kiln order to be decent, but continued to get better from additional time and processes like cavendish(ing), making rope, and pressing. Tobacco which I thought was ok back then, I now savor. Some I thought was no good is now highly important for blending. Some was baaad and is now still bad, but that's why you try new things.
It's often spoken that the kiln takes time off of aging, but it's only adequate for getting rid of that fresh grassiness, in my opinion. It really takes a couple more years, stored in case, for the tobacco to shine. But it's worth it.
Sun cured, flue cured, and fire cured requires less aging than air cured. That's for sure. You can smoke and enjoy it within months.
It's often spoken that the kiln takes time off of aging, but it's only adequate for getting rid of that fresh grassiness, in my opinion. It really takes a couple more years, stored in case, for the tobacco to shine. But it's worth it.
Sun cured, flue cured, and fire cured requires less aging than air cured. That's for sure. You can smoke and enjoy it within months.