Growing tobacco, small scale gardening

[resonanteye]

This year I decided to grow a patch of tobacco to experiment and see how it would be to grow and process it myself

I grew up in an area with tobacco as a crop but have never grown it. where I live now it is not a main crop, only a curiosity. I do not have a flue or shed for it and am following home-growing, low-tech processing.

I grew one Massachusetts wrapper tobacco plant last year to trial. it grew well, I didn’t harvest anything from it, just observed how it grew and what conditions it liked here.

end season, October in greenhouse

I ordered the seeds for this year from . I ordered 4 types- PA, KY, CT, and a rustica variety. I also had some seed from my wrapper tobacco, which I grew out 4 plants from.

I started my seeds germinating in January. this may have been early, I’m not certain- it did work though. the seeds are tiny and I had to use caution with the soil, I chose the anti fungal promix to start them with a humidity dome until they had true leaves.

this was around the same time, same technique, but it’s my onions I think.

I teased them apart with my fingers and up potted them once they were a few inches tall, choosing to baby the biggest plants. I narrowed down my choices to the plants that were least leggy as I went through, ending up with a dozen of each of 4 varieties.

I used a large “fabric bed” pot for them as I wanted them contained, movable if necessary, and in one visible place for the season. I think if I plant in ground I will get bigger plants, so next year I will. as an experimental crop this worked well for me (it will be used for okra next year, as that’s my next experiment).

4 of each type in each square. a bit close.

I filled with compost at the bottom, standard soil to fill, then some high quality potting mix on top. I think a little straw to mulch around them.

they pushed along pretty well and crowded each other a bit.

mid August they shot up, and the bottom leaves began to prime. (yellow). I was able to harvest a few to test towel curing, to yellow the leaves completely before drying. I ended up using a batch method instead as more came prime.

I lay all leaves out flat on top of old t-shirt material in a tray, cover with another layer, and flip them around ever day. they yellow slowly and then are ready to hang.

color cured.

drying.

I use a spray bottle that’s a mix of spiced rum, propylene glycol, and water to spray them down once a day while they hang. it is VERY arid here and they would dry too quickly otherwise.

once they are fully dry I clip them from the stem and put them in a cardboard box to wait; once all is harvested I’ll go through and spray to “case” them, then chop them for rolling tobacco.

the PA and CT and rustic have done best as far as size and scent of the leaves. the KY dry dark and smell heavenly but take forever to color cure.

several of the plants got taller than me before I topped them. I saved seed from 3 plants for next year and will order from a different place to test new kinds, too.

it takes 6 months to a year to age the tobacco once it’s cured and dried. I will not know if I’ve succeeded until spring, when I’ll smoke some.

I took this on as a whim, and I really enjoyed it. has anyone else grown tobacco for fun or just to see if they could?

[steveb4]

i grew some burley about 3 years ago. they grew to 8ft. monsters. i cured as they primed then left hanging in the garage over winter. chopped it next spring and gave to a buddy that smokes. he said it was good despite me not knowing anything about curing it. i may play with seed next spring ,i got from strictly medicinals a few years ago. one is kesso tobacco that supposedly is mildly psycotropic from Norway.

[Orange120OD]

Ive helped bail dryed tobacco to go to the market. Never had the opportunity to grow, harvest, or hang to dry. I have a relative that used to sell bales at the Amish market in Paradise PA. Lots of work for sure! Fermenting can be taken next level if desired.

[Orange120OD]

Id actually love to smoke some Perique or Latakia if i had it handy!

[dannytoro1]

Oh yes. Years ago I grew my own tobacco to make chew rings, wet plugs for chewing and dry plugs to easily grind cigarette and pipe tobaccos. Apple slice chew plugs were very popular drenching the tobacco in apple juice before boxing the plugs with the apple slices. Finished with Paris wrapper or Black Mammoth leave outer wraps. Black Mammoth , Greenwood Dark , Catterton, Orinoco and Big Gem were some of my favorite plants to grow.

[Lucas]

Very cool! I have been thinking of growing tobacco recently, for whatever reason. I haven’t smoked in years so might not end up being the best decision lol. Thank you for sharing the process, though!

[resonanteye]

gosh that sounds great, apple slices! I was planning on Orange peel in the finished bags.

[dannytoro1]

I’ve done dried peach and pear slices too.

[Lucky_P]

Tobacco is still a significant crop here in my area of southern west-central KY, but with the ‘tobacco settlement’ back in 1998, all the little small producers went away, and production is mainly in the hands of big producers who plant hundreds of acres.
Two main types of tobacco are grown here, and while I have friends who have grown it all their lives, I still have only rudimentary knowledge of the harvest process:
Burley, which is air-cured in barns; the stalks are cut, stacked, allowed to wilt down, then transported to the barns to be hung. I presume burley goes mainly into smokable products like cigarettes, pipe tobacco.
Dark-Fired, which is the staple for chewing tobacco, snuff, etc. The DF plants are darker green than burley, and make longer, narrower leaves. They’re harvested and hung in barns that can be closed up tightly, then ‘fired’ with a smoldering sawdust fire on sawmill slabs. It can be alarming, at first, to come upon a dark-fired barn with smoke billowing out. The fire is closely tended, but even so, it is very common for it to get out of hand and burn down the barn.
I love it in the fall when they ‘fire’ the barns and that fog of smoke comes creeping down the hollow of an evening. Smells heavenly to me (I chewed or smoked tobacco for nearly 50 years); not at all offensive, like I now find cigarette smoke to be.
Photo below of a typical, old-style dark-fired barn. Most of the newer ones are just metal polebarns with roof vents.

[a_Vivaldi]

While I don’t grow, and probably won’t ever have reason to grow, Nicotiana tabacum, I do grow one of its parents, N. sylvestris as an ornamental and pollinator plant. Sphynx months and hummingbirds really like them. As a bonus, gnats often get suck to their sticky, hairy leaves and die, presumably from the nicotine or other alkaloids.

For me, they are herbaceous perennials and overwinter with little issue. If fed well (they are crazy N hungry) they can get really big too.

I might try grafting some tomatoes or peppers to one or two of them next year just to see what happens.

I also grow N. glauca but with a bit less success. It’s a prettier plant, but the flowers are much less spectacular, and it is only marginally hardy for me. Unlike the root-hardy sylvestris, glauca overwinters as stalks and so far only bigger stalks from plants growing under the partial cover of a Eucalyptus have survived the winter.

Someday I might try crossing them to see what I get (they’re not in the same clade, but they are closer together than many of the other hybrids in the genus and they do have the same ploidy and number of chromosomes). I’d love to get the blue leaves combined with the white flowers, and something both root and stem hardy would be nice (if improbable).

[don1357]

@Orange120OD

Id actually love to smoke some Perique or Latakia if i had it handy!

Chances are Syrian Latakia is forever gone, the civil war destroyed the infrastructure and it doesn’t seem to be coming back. I haven’t smoked my pipe in years but when I pick it up again I have 10 cans of it waiting for me. I figure it was worth stashing. I just did a quick search on the places that sell vintage tobacco and that was certainly a good idea.

[MikeC]

My family grew tobacco for many years in SE Kentucky. I loved the smell inside their tobacco barn. Nice job growing your tobacco.

[Lucky_P]

@MikeC
One of my friends, and a former boss, grew up growing tobacco in central KY (Elk Horn, SE of Campbellsville)… put himself through college and vet school with tobacco sales.

When he first came to western KY (it seems that many folks in eastern KY and the ‘golden triangle’ think the world ends west of Elizabethtown) he saw his first dark-fired tobacco barn emanating its smoke, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was on fire.

[warmwxrules]

I have some that just pops up every year. A taller later type with huge leaves and a smaller more flowering type that is earlier blooming (and smell very good at night). They are prolific seed producers and the seed is tiny. Tobacco was grown just south of here, but not sure if any does anymore. I don’t smoke but if you take a dried leaf and crush it in your hand it smells so good.

[steveb4]

i had some burley tobacco continue to pop up for 4 years after i grew that 1 plant from the seed that spread everywhere. my mother used to harvest it as a teenager when they lived in C.T in the late 50’s. mine grew to 6ft with no fertilizer or babying.

[dannytoro1]

At my last property I had 2 seed beds with Big Gem I grew as ornamentals. They self seeded too. The bed with Catterton finally died of last time I drove by there,

[MikeC]

Tobacco smells so good when it is drying and when it is dried.

[resonanteye]

there were people who grew near my grandparents’ place when I was a kid. they used their old outhouses (after they’d build a new shed, they’d move the old one to the tobacco area and put a more solid door on it) as curing sheds.

I believe they used a small oven inside with boiling water or the like to do the curing. steam always coming out.

the slow process I’m doing is so small scale- but I’ve seen the big old hothouses and flue cure buildings back east.

I’m planning to age what I have as long as I can. I’m saving seed just to see what comes of the cross pollination, but will grow from fresh seed too.

suckers have a high nicotine content, so I’m letting them come on

flowering and going to seed.

a big leaf! this is the rustic plant. they dry very dark.

leaves in various processing stages. on some you can see the crocodile pattern of the leaves being prime to pick; the spots on some are from chlorophyll being left behind during drying. some dry like a banana peel, dark and light at the same time. some dry all one tone. each plant is different.

for processing the PA bright tobacco has been easiest but the rustic and CT are the most fragrant.

my holding box smells like urea/nitrogen when first opened, then a moment later, smells like heaven.

[MikeC]

Nice photos. Great story and memories of the people around your grandparents. Love that tobacco smell. My grandmother had a huge twist of tobacco leaves her grandfather made when he grew tobacco. It had a small knife cut out of it where he took his knife to cut a small piece to taste it. My grandmother had it mounted in a picture frame and had it on the wall. I wish I had that after she passed away. I have no idea where that big twist of tobacco in the picture frame is now, bummer.