Thank you for your suggestions. Kbven.com definitely seems to have some of the more "rare" plugs and rope. GLP seems to have a number of choices I look forward to trying.
Plug And Rope That Are Not Elusive?
- Thread starter J.GANDY
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Tobacco doesn't like soil that has had tomatoes growing in it. I grew tobacco back in the UK 30 odd years ago. It will grow quite well. We used to have the Tobacco Growers Co-operative at Tilthy in Dunmow Essex that would cure all the leaves for you and sold seeds. I think there is an ancient video of it on Youtube. The other great U.K 'Grow Your Own' exponent was Guy N. Smith with his book Grow Your Own Tobacco which seemed to recommend boiling the leaves as part of the curing process - I never got into that idea! Cosmic's twists look very good and far superior to my own humble efforts three decades ago. I take my hat off to you my man.
When I researched growing Virginias, I found the same thing. Poor soil is the best, meaning I had to mix chert, sand, and soils that I had to import. The Virginias were growing in poor swampy sandy soils of South Carolina in the beginning. It was a slave that noticed after a barn fire that heat had improved the quality. Tomatoes are a fruiting plant and heavy feeder, stripping the nutrients from the soil to form a fruit. We don't want fruit from tobacco, so you look for different conditions... I'm sorry for not being more specific. I have notes, because my feeble mind... But, I found the same thing true when building my vineyard. To grow imported varieties of wine grapes, I had to import terrible soils, and build raised beds. This way I can better control the nutrients they need at very specific times.
Here I am doing the back breaking work of moving soil from the trucks to my raised beds a few years ago. My tobacco grown here was much more fruity than when I grew them in my corn fields. I can pull more natural cherry and berry flavors from my tobaccos, and my wine... Oh don't get me started on how excited I am about how my wine turned out. I am currently looking for the shittiest hillside land to start my own vineyard, because it is much easier to sell wine than tobaccos.
As for boiling the leaf... I don't even know where to begin...
On the curing side if you didn't send them off to Tilthy for curing I would to wait until late August after I had trimmed the flowers off so that all the energy went into the leaves. When the leaves were a tad droopy and would snap off cleanly you could start harvesting. You would stack the hands on the lawn and cover with sack cloth. Keep the temperature as warm as a broody hen so that all the green leaves turned yellow then pretty much follow Cosmic's guideline or send them off to be cured by someone else. I used to use my attic and few big metal pans of water to control the humidity and finish up in my Mothers airing cupboard.
Great advice! Although, I am totally ignorant of where of send them, but it sounds like you've got a great contact.
I would add that by the time the flowers start showing, if you are strictly wanting pipe tobacco, you can just cut the plants down, and start a new set of plants. I can get six sets of VA plants to harvest in one season here in Alabama. You probably won't like any of the leaf above the Seco line, because it will be really harsh. I will keep some burley going and definately the cigar leaf, but for Virginias, they'll rip your throat out. IMO.
The very bottom leaf is the tastiest, going up to about six tiers of leaf.
It sounds difficult, but once you see how the leaf turns yellow and you learn to read the leaf, it's really obvious and simple.
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