JT's P.A.C.T. Garden

[zeb]

Glad to hear the seven dust is working.I mix up a two gallon sprayer of the stuff every spring for the garden been using it on my plants all so.Thanks for the tip on helping it pollinate.

[snupy]

WOW! Screw PACT! How many years will it be before you have to order snus again?

GOOD JOB MAN! Shit, I hope mine end up looking that good!

[justintempler]

July 27th. Time for some update pics. That's a 6 foot step ladder to give you some perspective.

The main playing field:



Minor League, 2nd string:



Monster plants:



Perspective, 6 foor ladder, middle row is the flower row:

[justintempler]

Plenty of flowers = Plenty of seeds:



CloseUp of the DelGold flower:



Large Paperclips + Saw Palmetto stalks + eave of the house = air curing:



Trash leaves and the biggest ones are the lugs (lugs picked yesterday):

[Mr. Snuffleupagus]

[LaZeR]

[Snusdog]

I see ya and raise you one





Very Very impressive JT!!!!

[Roo]

You are such a gangster JT! Will you put any of your snus up for trade or auction? I really want to try it.

[justintempler]

You are such a gangster JT! Will you put any of your snus up for trade or auction? I really want to try it.

Eventually when I'm happy with it, I'll trade it. I have NO plans to auction or sell any. (I don't want to give Uncle Sam any reason to frak with me)

I'm also unsure if DelGold will make a good snus. Although DelGold is a Virginia tobacco it might not be the best kind of Virginia tobacco for making snus. (Although I know it will make a great cigarette tobacco). I picked DelGold because it's easy to grow and grows good in the native soil here in Florida.

When Americans use the term Virginia tobacco most of us think of Flue Cured Virginia.
When Europeans use the term Virginia tobacco, most of the time, they are referring to what used to be called Dark Export tobacco.
Dark export tobaccos today we would call Virginia Sun Cured, and Kentucky Dark Air Cured/Kentucky Dark Fired.

so what does the word "Virginia" mean in the following history...

In 1915 Ettan was thus nationalized, together with all other tobacco factories. The government's representative who evaluated the company was astounded to see such vast quantities of Virginia tobacco in a snus producers stock. But Robert Ljunglöf answered with the obvious: Otherwise it wouldn't be Ettan!

So the question remains, wlll DelGold make a good snus we'll find out in about 4 months. 1 more month of growing, 3 months of curing. The plan is the lower leaves will be for cigarettes, and the higher leaves (which have a higher nicotine content) for snus.

[zeb]

WOW,those look amazing!

[justintempler]

update:

Nothing too exciting...
I started harvesting seed pods.
I gave the middle row a haircut and trimmed all the leaves back to the same height as the rest of the patch. (The stalks with the flowers remain, just the upper leaves are gone)
I've harvested a few more of the bottom leaves but nothing major yet. The upper leaves are getting very thick and leathery.
I've had some heavy rains and a couple of the plants next to the house kept getting knocked over by rain so I pulled them, the main garden is fine.
The hanging leaves are curing good. They are curing with a reddish brown color. I've compacted the bunches after they've dried and the new bigger leaves are heavier so they go on half lengths until they lose their water weight.

I'll snap some update pics in a couple weeks.

[chadizzy1]

Crop is looking good JT!

[snupy]

Beautiful JT. I picked my first 6 leaves today myself. 5 of them went completely yellow on the plant, while the 6 was already totally brown. You've got enough tobacco to make your own snus for what, the next ten years?

[justintempler]

Harvest is well underway....






All the leaves should be harvested within a couple weeks except for the backup replacements and the spares.
I'm also doing some sucker experiments. Trying to root some suckers also going to see if I can cut stalk, leave the roots and see if basil suckers will develop into a decent size plant.

[justintempler]

2010 Harvest was 10 days ago, this is what it looks like so far........



a different angle:



Being curious....I want to see what's possible growing a "sucker" crop:



I cut back each stalk as close as is possible to the ground, (I want leaves, not flowers!):



After 90 days (Dec 1) I'm going to cook a batch of snus to see just how good of a snus DelGold makes...

I'll update pics of my "sucker" garden in a month unless it looks interesting before then.....