tobacco time...

After getting the majority of the gardens in for the summer, it came time to begin planting the tobacco down in the holler.  We loaded up Azulita with plants, the tiny tiller, wood ash, fertilizer and chainsaw then  headed down the hill for a day of "fun."

Manthing tilled up the rows right quick while I  followed behind with the bucket of ash, fertilizer, and my handy dandy little trowel. After he tilled, I sprinkled some ash in each hole, threw a bit of  grow juice in  and set the plants in.  We do use commercial fertilizer twice a year for the tobacco. It is a very heaver feeder  on the soil and though we do not use chemical fertilizer on anything else we grow, we cannot keep up with amounts needed for the tobacco too.

 

  

The plants were a  tiny bit smaller than I would have liked but they did  have an excellent root system for a change.   Once manthing got my rows done he went off and collected  cook wood from dead fall while I planted and planted and planted.  About 200  plants were put in the ground and we still have about that many to go in yet.  Depending on the weather we may get them in this weekend. Tobacco needs to stay moist just after transplantation or they tend to die off to the ground. Planting just before a rain  or watering them in is needed.  As a side note, once tobacco has established   good roots it is very difficult to kill  off. It more often than not, will grow back  from  what looks to be a dead plant so  wait a week or two before replanting if you think you have killed the babies.

  

sowing of the seeds

With the weird winter we are having this year, planning and planting of the gardens has been quite a challenge. We have had next to no winter weather and nice warm days with few cold nights which makes it very hard to hold back from planting early crops.

Over the last couple weeks I have decided to not hold back any longer since it is just seed and why waste what could be a perfectly good cold crop growing season. Of course, now that I have planted several thousand square feet of gardens, winter is going to arrive. Even if it all gets killed it is just seed and I will have wasted approximately five dollars. If I did not plant until the calendar tells me to I may miss the window and not get any of the cool weather crops.

Thus far, we have carrots, onions, peas, greens of all sorts, beets, turnips, sprouting broccoli, broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage of several varieties planted in the GH and outdoors. Since none have sprouted yet, I am hoping that the cold streak coming in for the weekend will not harm them in any way. Though, if it does, I will just plant again.

It is the perfect time to get some of our other seeds started. The tobacco was seeded the other day as were some tomatoes, paprika peppers, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Now I can relax a bit while all the little darlings germinate and work on outdoor beds as time permits.

Speaking of time, only four more weeks until I am done with school! It will be awesome to have a three month break before I begin again but more importantly, it falls the 6- 8 weeks before our summer planting, leaving me with plenty of time to get gardens ready.

Lastly, after searching for a tobacco growing group on the lovely FB and not finding any, I made one. For anyone wishing to join in on the fun we now have frugal homesteads, homesteading, and hobby tobacco growers group on there .

tobacco-storing and cutting

I realize there are 2700 ways and everyone says their way is what works when it comes to the storage and curing of tobacco. This is how we do it on a very small budget and while I will not say it is the best way, it does give us a nice smooth tobacco that didn't cost 500 bucks to set up. We have tried it a few different ways over the last few years and we finally think we got it figured out. Again, this is just our way, our experience and our story. What works for you may be a little different or a lot different depending on your situation.
Sure, hanging tobacco for a year or two is a good idea in theory. Unfortunately, for most of us, hanging anything for two years would create all sorts of issues with space, cob webs, wildlife and other nastiness that I would prefer not to have on my tobacco. For us, the issue is room, mold and critters. A good pack rat will hoard away a months worth of tobacco in a single night. And, quite frankly, I am not going to continue buying tobacco for a year or two while waiting for what I worked so hard to grow to cure and smoke.

Anywho, once the tobacco is hung to dry it will require a couple of months to turn to a uniform brown color. This is where some folks think it should sit for a couple years. We don't! Once it is dry we pick a morning where the humidity is high and the leaves are flexible and strip the veins from the leaves. We are not overly picky in this process and only work on the center vein, the others will chop up later on in the process. Once the veins are removed we just throw it in a box, any box, so long as the top can be closed to keep the dust off. That's it! It can be just that simple.
We have played with this method the last couple of years in an attempt to get a better flavor out of the tobacco. We have figured out that it cures and develops a nice flavor once it has been cut and then stored. For storage we like to recycle coffee cans as they seal in the flavors and aroma while keeping yucky stuff out. It makes storage much easier since they do not take up near the space and we also know exactly how much tobacco we have.

Since most of us do not have the money to spend a few hundred dollars on fancy schmancy tobacco choppers and I know we didn't and still don't, we also experiment with different ways of cutting the tobacco. The first year we simply threw it into the food processor. It works but is very difficult to get the shredded tobacco a uniform size. A couple seconds too long and you end up with a powder and a couple seconds too short and you have tobacco that's three inches long that is difficult to roll and near impossible to smoke.

What we have begun to do is make a roll of leaves and place it between two blocks of wood, then take a C clamp and close it down to make a small brick. Once compacted, release from the clamp, take a sharp knife and slice it thinly. I have not tried it but have read of people using old school paper cutters to cut it after making the bricks. From there, a quick whirl in the food processor or a small herb/ tobacco grinder will bring the tobacco to a usable size. There are a couple advantages to using the food processor. Larger amounts can be chopped at once and it is easy to add any flavorings(honey in a bit of everclear or vodka). It is a good way to evenly distribute it through the tobacco without making a mess of things.


Once the tobacco is cut and chopped to the size you wish, stuff it into coffee cans or other container and let it cure and develop the flavors. The longer it cures the better the flavor that develops. I would like to say that we have let some of our tobacco age a couple of years and then tried it, but we have not. We always need to use it within a few months time. Maybe one day we will get to the point that we have tobacco enough to store some for a year or two before trying.

tobacco harvest

Though much of the tobacco is still very healthy and green, we came to the realization the other day that we realistically have 3-6 weeks until our first frost. Tobacco quits curing when the temperatures are under 55 degrees and since tobacco cures best outside, it was time to start cutting it down and hauling it up to hang.Many who grow tobacco hang the entire plant to dry. Because of space issues and humidity issues here, we tend to hang the big leaves by stringing them up in small bundles and then putting the smaller leaves on racks in the sun. We actually prefer sun drying all the tobacco but this requires a lot of extra time and effort in the process and I can't be fussed over the time or the effort.
The tobacco has had a really good growing season this year and we were only able to get about half of it harvested and hung yesterday. Next weekend we will cut the rest. This week I will make a couple more posts on de-veining, storage and chopping.

tobacco seed

It is the time of year to harvest the tobacco seed pods. We typically leave just one or two plants to flower and make seed for the next year. It is said that the seed from one tobacco plant is enough to plant about an acre worth of land. I like to always have plenty so we save two plants. This year, however, I saved three so that I can try and naturalize some next season.

Once the tobacco flowers the plant will develop seed pods up where the flowers were. Some people like to bag the seed pods so that they will not break open and sow themselves but we have never had that problem so I don't. Once the pods turn brown they are ready to harvest. I put the seed in a bowl so that I don't lose them all over the place and just break each pod apart and then sift the seed though a small sieve. Make sure they are dry and package them up for next year. It's as simple as that. The photo of the seeds above is just one plant and is about a tablespoon of seed. Though it does not seem like much, tobacco seed is about the size of a toothpick head.

topping tobacco

We spent the morning down in the tobacco patch checking for bugs, worms, yellowing leaves, and tipped over plants from the rain yesterday. We had a few more to get in the ground yet too and it was also time to top the first round of plants that went in. Very few bugs and worms thus far thankfully and there were only a handful or two of plants that had fallen over so it was not too tough of a job.

Tobacco, like all plants begins to set seed before the end of its life cycle. Since one plant can provide enough seed for about an acre of garden, they are topped when this begins to happen. We typically only allow one or two plants to make seed for us. This way, the plant continues to do what it is supposed to do rather than putting energy in making seeds. Topping a plant is just like it sounds, taking the top off. This also tends to help the plants stay upright better as they finish growing. The flower/seed heads get heavy and the upper leaves that come with them make the plant top heavy so any heavy rains or winds can take the plants down.
Once the plants were topped, we hauled the big pile of broken or yellowing leaves up and began stringing them in small bundles to hang and begin curing.

a new bed and tobacco pests

The other day the fellers built a new garden bed down in the bowl area. There was excess dirt from where the stairs were carved out and this was the closest place that they could fit one in where there wasn't too much gravel to move first.
The tobacco is coming along quite well except for a couple of plants that looked like they had some funky disease. After a closer look at the underside of the affected leaves this is what I found
I have never seen a moth like this on the tobacco before. He was a big ugly bugger. It is time to start watching the tobacco closely for worms, moths, and other nasty critters .

around the homestead-tobacco planting

Finally got the first round of tobacco in the ground this morning. Second round has a bit more to grow before planting and the third round is still tiny and wont go in until July or so. Since tobacco needs tons of fertilizer anyway I decided to throw another round of corn in between them all. We typically use store bought fertilizer for the tobacco rather than organic but this year we are trying to go all natural and use wood ash and pee. The plants in the pictures look a bit funny as they were dusted in ash as I plant them. We have also gone to only tilling the rows where we are planting rather than the entire garden. Soon as the new weedeating machine comes in the paths will be mowed down. On the ends of each row I put in winter squash and some melons. I am hoping they will all grow outward toward the fence rather than through the tobacco beds. I really need a ski lift put in on the hill to the lower garden, my legs are tuckered out from hiking up and down the hill somewhere near 15 times.
Found a couple rogue potato plants from taters we had down there going on 2 years ago and decided to pull them up . Check these bad boys out !

...and the gardens are all in

The manthing has had quite a few days off over the last couple of weeks so we have been able to plug away at getting the gardens in. This has helped me in so many ways I can't count and I was a bit worried about getting it all in. As of Tuesday evening, everything is in the ground with the exception of the tobacco. I still have a small pile of tomatoes to get in somewhere yet, but am holding on to them to replace the turnips and peas as they are harvested.

What we thought was blackberry winter last week obviously wasn't as yesterday it was cold enough to build a fire and burn it through the night. Luckily we did not have a frost but we came very close to it. Doesn't it figure that well over a week after last frost date we almost have everything wiped out. I am sure some people lost a bunch of stuff somewhere down here because of it. The good thing is, that it is early enough in the season that anything that could have died from it can be replanted with no issue.

The tobacco is finally starting to grow well and the first 50 or so plants are nearly ready to go in the ground. Another hundred should be ready in a couple weeks and the remaining hundred should be ready to go in the first or second week of June. This still leaves plenty of time for the tobacco to grow and depending on how things go I may even do another round after that.

While everything is now in the ground, things are very slow to germinate or grow. We have had nice days but nights have stayed very cool so the soil is slow to warm up. I am trying not to go through all the beds and replant what is not growing but things better get busy soon. I can't stand not seeing progress in the gardens and I really want a cucumber.

harvesting and drying tobacco

I have now begun cutting the  tobacco. The majority of the plants are as large as they are going to get, and are nothing more than worm and bug magnets. As soon as I see them  growing a sucker near the bottom of the stalk I am cutting them just above the node where the sucker is growing. This will give them enough time to grow all over again, and give us a second cutting from the plants as we still have about 70 days until frost.

We are doing things a little different than we did last year  with the drying as well. Instead of hanging the entire plant to dry, we are pulling all the leaves off and stringing them to hang. Hopefully, this will give us enough room to hang  all of it this year, and make it easier when it is time to cure it as we will only need to cut the strings and throw the individual bunches  in to the box to age.

I know, I said I wouldn't do any more videos  but here is  a short one on how we are hanging it to dry. Excuse the mess please, I have more things drying and curing than I have space for so things are everywhere.

garden update-tobacco-pests and issues

The tobacco is finally doing quite well and is in a nice growth spurt. Unfortunately, this also brings the pests in to wreak havoc on the crop. While we have been fighting a bit with aphids over the last few weeks, the worms are just beginning to show up. These fellers do a lot of damage in very little time so it is important to spend one on one time with each of your plants on a daily or near daily basis to keep issues under control.

The following  two  pictures are of damage done to a plant in approximately 24 hours by worms. The worms have tell tale signs that they leave behind on the leaves. Large holes and chunks are generally gone from the plant and there is almost always worm poop left behind. The poops  generally show up near the stalk and where leaves attach. The poops are little round balls  that are black. When finding worm  damage the easiest control method is to  physically inspect each plant carefully. This means looking at the tops and bottoms of every leaf on all of the plants. The worms  get very large and ugly if allowed to and will decimate a crop in short order.

The next picture is of the aphids. They are difficult to see in the picture but they are the little reddish colored  things on the lower right side. These fellers are always on the underside of the  leaves and while their damage is not near as quick to destroy  a crop they can and will if left unchecked over time. For these guys we use  one cup  of 70% or greater isopropyl alcohol  with a tablespoon of castile soap  in a quart of water and spray the plants on the underside of the affected plants. The spray will kill them and they turn a nice shade of black. Never spray plants with this in the heat of the day as it will kill them. Repeat the treatment as needed.

The last issue we tend to find with the tobacco is  a folding over of  the leaves on some plants. I have no idea why this happens as  we never see any damage on the plants  that this happens too but if left upside down, the leaves  snap off much easier in wind and rains.Do be sure to inspect the plant for any other signs or symptoms of disease or infestation to be sure it is simply a screwy leaf. To fix the leaf, gently turn  it back over  from near where it connects to the stalk and work it back to  the upright position. Once this is done they  generally are fixed.

Soon, suckering and topping the plants will be needed on a regular basis along with your inspections. Remember too that the tobacco is now getting all  its toxins so be sure to wash your hands well before playing in the rest of the gardens  and NEVER touch or go in to your tomato patch after  working the tobacco.

garden 2010- tobacco update

 The tobacco  has finally started growing! It has sure taken its sweet old time in establishing itself and starting  its growth spurt. This morning the manthing and I spent three full hours down there weeding, hilling and running the tiller between the rows for what will be the last time. The true work of growing tobacco is set to begin now with topping, suckering  and worm picking but that ain't my job. From here on out  the tomatoes are my job and tobacco is the manthing's, this is  so we do not risk losing the tomatoes with tobacco mosaic. Tobacco is truly a labor intensive crop, I could not imagine trying to be a small farmer trying to make a living growing tobacco years ago.

 Many of the plants are now knee high but all that are planted are growing well, FINALLY! My direct seeded plants are still too small to detect so I can not give an up date on them. I still have another 40 or so plants that are in the original starter flats that will need to be planted in the next week or two as well. I did not bother to transplant them into individual grow cups as they seemed to do better in the flats this year. The volunteer plants seem to be doing well too although a couple got weedwacked  this last week. Just one of the risks when you are a volunteer plant growing where you were not planted last year.

garden 2010-tobacco update

Yesterday we planted another round of tobacco plants into the garden.  We still have one round to go yet and we are thinking of trying a few guerrilla style as we will have more than will fit in to the garden area that we have set aside.

The plants have stayed very small this year and  I am curious as to the reason why. We did kick them to the GH very early this season  and last season grew them under  lights in the shack. I am wondering if the warmth factor in the shack was a reason   although  the GH gets plenty warm even on very cool days.  Last season I used our own soil, this year I used purchased soil, I wonder if that could be a reason as well.

Some of the plantlings are still under two inches tall and  just starting to get more than two leaves. No matter I threw the tiny babies in the ground anyway, I was sick of tending them. They are in true  tobacco fashion  starting to  go in to their growth spurt as  the ones that we planted last week  have doubled in size already.

Here is a view of the planted tobacco patch. This pic only shows about a quarter of the bed, this is our largest  bed on the property and is about 150x40. The remainder of the patch will also be planted in tobacco. I have also planted 3 squash or melon plants in each row of tobacco. This could be interesting to watch this garden grow.

gardens 2010- tobacco update

I went to check on the plants in the loft today and re-pot  some tomatoes when I noticed the tobacco seedlings are all coming up. They were planted 13 days ago today. Looks to be a pretty good germination rate but  it is  hard to tell as yet because they are so tiny.  Tobacco is a very slow starter but once it gets growing  good  it grows very  quickly.

These babies will stay in the trays they are in now until they are a little over an inch tall and then will be transferred into grow cups  for  a few weeks before going to the garden plot. If I remember correctly last year it was about two weeks before they reached  the point of transplantation. The seedlings in the picture are probably pretty close to life size. Look hard as they are hard to see. I tried to blow them up but my camera just isn't made for taking pictures of microscopic things.

tobacco- a review of our first year

We took down the last of our hanging tobacco yesterday afternoon. It now looks very naked out under the car port as we have had tobacco hanging in there since last July. While I was stripping the leaves off the stalks, I began putting together a list of in my head of  some of our observations now that we have  gone through  an entire cycle of growing, curing and smoking of our chemical free cancer sticks. So, without further ado and in no particular order are some of our gleanings as tobacco growers.

The curing and aging  of the tobacco is not the most difficult part of  the process. Topping and worm picking  are. These worms are no ordinary worm. They make the tomato  worms  seem little in comparison, in fact I am convinced  a small child could use one as a ride on toy in a pinch. These worms have a huge appetite and can devour a plant in short order. The best control for them is picking them off and stomping them. Elder wisdom says to mashum up and make a spray of their parts and spray the plants. Good idea but even more time consuming than the pick n stomp is.  The top/pick sessions take a good amount of time daily. We had about 100 plants and it took us between an hour and two hours  nearly every day.

One would think, or I thought that tobacco wouldn't have many pests. After all it is pure nicotine and one of the most potent insecticides there is. WRONG,  it has plenty of pests  and with the sheer  size of the plants and leaf area  it means oodles of pests and oodles of spray   to counteract  these pests. A pump sprayer and not a spray bottle is what we would recommend to folks growing any amount of tobacco.

When we first started researching tobacco and growing it  for ourselves the average  yield per plant seemed very low at 3-5 ounces each. This is no lie, it really does shrink down to that little bit of nothing. For the two of us here that equals approximately 3 days of tobacco. Needless to say we are fixing to run out of tobacco.

Not all tobacco is considered equal.  We grew three type of tobacco one of which  was awful. Be prepared to try a couple of different strains and see what works for you in your situation. Our silkleaf variety last season was our favored tobacco for  growth, amount of yield, curing and flavor. This season we are going to try a a couple burley varieties and see how they do.

Space is a huge factor when growing your own  tobacco. From seed to storage  it requires space and lots of it. A couple hundred seedlings  takes a fair bit of space to house. In the field it requires a good 4 sf per plant. We tried skimping  a bit on the spacing and this year we will go with at least that spacing, maybe increasing it  to 5 sf. Once pruning and harvesting begins  you need to have a weather proof area to hang it all  to dry. On the individual leaves  hanging is best done in small groups by a string that pierces through the leaf vein. Tying a string around the cluster works well until the amazing shrinkage begins and they begin falling to the ground. Of course you don't want to hang too many together or hang them to closely, because, in humid, wet weather it  will mold. Airflow is crucial. If you live in an area where temps go below 55 or so  any unfinished tobacco will need to go to an area where temps can remain above 55.  At that temperatures it no longer  dries or cures well, ask me how  I know.

In our ever greedy, money driven world  a person is led to believe they need  high tech  equipment to grow your own tobacco This is untrue. It is just another thing  to get you to go out and spend your hard earned money on  stuff that isn't needed. With a bit of improvisation, common sense and piecing things together to  make it work for you it shouldn't cost several hundred dollars.

And finally if you smoke think about papers, how many you  will go through in a given amount of time  and where you are going to purchase them all. Switching to a pipe may be the best alternative for you as the  cost  of papers adds up over time and you can bet it will only keep rising as more people switch to growing their own instead of buying  tailor made smokes. Pipes are not the most convenient thing to smoke from while out and about working  but for sitting around relaxing  they work  quite well and are cheap to come by.

Growing tobacco 2009

Last winter when it was announced new taxes were being placed on roll your own tobacco we ordered a sufficient quantity to get us through until we could learn to grow our own or because of crop failure having to abruptly quit.

After doing a bit of research and reading up on it we decided that it was something we should be able to accomplish without too much hassle. So we we set about ordering seeds we settled on using the seedman. The seeds through there are a bit expensive but we had quick service and very good seed germination. We also joined a site on growing your own tobacco. This site was and is quite helpful for beginners.

Here is a photo tutorial of the tobacco growing process. In the photos I give a basic description of the tobacco growing process . This is just our experience and what has worked for us .

some of our thoughts on growing tobacco

It is a lot more work than we had ever imagined.

It requires regular care and maintenance.

It requires a fair bit of room to grow any quantity of smoke. From 3-5 oz of smoking tobacco per plant is all they yield.

It is quite a hardy plant, we left a couple plants out to see what happened with frost and they are still growing and making flowers.

Working with tobacco is a sticky gooey process and tobacco is a poison. Keep this in mind when handling.

Tobacco and tomatoes do NOT do well anywhere close to one another, the risk of tobacco mosaic is great.

Although tobacco is one of the best pesticides you can use, it has plenty of its own pests and issues.

When drying tobacco has a distinct odor to it.

Tobacco can be grown as an ornamental and can be grown as a container plant.

It is a nutrient hog and loves hard wood ashes.

Growing your own tobacco and smoking it is nothing like buying pre rolled cigarettes. I do not know if it is because of all the chemicals in brand name smokes or what but we do not have the cigarette cravings like we used to.The smokers cough has all but disappeared as well since we went from brand name to roll your own to grow our own.

Keep in mind if you grow your own tobacco you will then need something to smoke out of. Papers can get expensive even though they are cheaper than cigarettes, so keep this in mind for the future if you grow your own . Manthing has made us a couple of pipes to smoke from for times when we are sitting around relaxing and smoking. Papers on the other hand work much better for when up and doing.