It starts! 2013 tobacco growing season!

[Frosted]

The weather has been 80 - 97 % humidity over the past few weeks. Hope it's all ok.

[squeezyjohn]

Yes, spraying with vinegar can help, as can soaking in spirits and allowing to dry out. But the first is only temporary and the second will flavour the tobacco.

It it took a bit of deciphering what he was doing, but it seems to have worked!

[lxskllr]

Well that's what I did today ... and let me tell you it's a lot harder than that old boy makes it look!

That looks complicated. I think I'd have to look at diagrams to see exactly what he was doing.

Is there anything safe you can treat the tobacco with to prevent mold during cure?

[squeezyjohn]

Mould alert ... mould alert!

Yes - the first signs of mould were spotted today on the mid-ribs (stalk bit) of some of the varieties that have nearly finished colour curing in my shed. Apparently the British climate is fine to grow the stuff - but the sun just runs out of steam for that last bit of curing!

We've had autumnal fog and damp days of late and that has got to the stalks of my large leafed varieties with little white spots of the crop-threatening fuzzy blighters.

But fear not ... I've caught it in time this year and as most of the affected leaf was pretty much brown all through - I've stripped the mid-ribs out and have proceeded to make the tobacco in to a mixture of twists and 'carottes'

A carotte is an old-fashioned way of compressing the leaves in to a tight, long, thin, sausage-like structure which was the origin of carotte snuff. Have a look here at some old British sailors making them (which they call a 'perique' due to the fact that perique tobacco used to always be packaged up in this way for sale)

Well that's what I did today ... and let me tell you it's a lot harder than that old boy makes it look!

[squeezyjohn]

If you could only grow one type of tobacco to use for smokeless what would you pick?i

I'm still trying to work that one out! I'm fairly sure that for homemade snus then some sort of burley tobacco. The yellow twist bud grew very well for me and is curing very easily too.

But for twist I am not so sure - Rustica made a lovely twist but it's a bugger to cure and has very delicate thick leaves which compromise it's twist ability!

That's a thing of beauty squeezy. Keep up the good work. I should get you an amishman so he can teach you how to get dark Virginia to grow.

Thanks SnusPA - actually the Dark Virginia is growing very well but it's leaves aren't quite ready for harvesting yet. I haven't tried this variety before - its all still about experimenting!

[SnusnPA]

That's a thing of beauty squeezy. Keep up the good work. I should get you an amishman so he can teach you how to get dark Virginia to grow.

[GoVegan]

If you could only grow one type of tobacco to use for smokeless what would you pick?i

[squeezyjohn]

Well it's harvest time here at camp squeezy:

And you can see in the pictures above from left to right:

(Left) a shed full of tobacco - that's the stalk curing rustica at the front with yellow twist bud burley showing behind. I'm seriously running short of curing space and may have to resort to outdoor curing under the eves of the shed especially as I now have several sucker crops coming to maturity!

(Middle) Today's harvest of Black Stalk Mammoth leaves - just 3 plants worth and over 40 leaves - the longest of which are over 3ft

(Right) The rather sad looking stalks remaining after they have been primed with some unharvested Dark Virginia and the rustica sucker crop in the background and Yellow Twist bud suckers in the foreground.

[whalen]

Good! Best of luck and weather.

[squeezyjohn]

I'm hoping that the weather holds out too ... I want to have the majority of stuff that is ready curing as early in the year as I can - traditionally this coming bank holiday weekend is full of thunderstorms and threatening humid hot weather which I figure on average is good tobacco curing weather!

I have plenty of contingency plans such as lowering the plants if it gets too dry, or whipping them in to the greenhouse if it gets too wet.

[whalen]

From my experience this is actually the most critical stage of the tobacco process, the cure, the next week is when you either go green on the cure or moldy. Hopefully your weather will allow a slow moist cure.

[Skell18]

Looking good mate

[squeezyjohn]

Rustica is a smaller plant ... 3 to 4 foot tall with smaller leaves - I think that's just an optical effect in the photo - those Yellow Twist Bud plants are 6 foot and the rustica plants are about 3.5ft tall but hanging from a low wire rather than the apex of the shed.

[lxskllr]

Is rustica a much smaller plant? They look small for being almost as big as the ones you harvested.

[squeezyjohn]

The harvesting has begun ... the most advanced Yellow Twist Bud Burley plants have been harvested to try whole-stalk curing (as in don't pick the leaves - pick the whole plant and hang that!) Also the Rustica has been chopped in the same way ...

Here they are hanging in my barn*


(* - OK - barn is a bit of an exaggeration ... shed then)
The longer yellower plants at the front are the Yellow Twist Bud ones - and behind them strung on a wire are the 14 Rustica plants that were harvested just before I took the pic.

The most brilliant thing about the Rustica though is that although I've cut the stalks down ... new plants had already started to spring from the roots before I did that - so the patch that has been harvested still looks full! This is known as a sucker crop and given that half my rustica plants died on transplanting this is an incredibly good thing.

Here's the suckers after harvesting the first crop (please excuse my finger!)



They're almost as big as the ones I've cut down - but not as advanced - I reckon they'll be ready around mid-september for another harvest.