Growing your own tobacco?

PappyJoe

Has anyone considered attempting to grow your own tobacco? One of my sons lives on 10 acres in west Louisiana and other than the acre their house is own, the rest is used for cattle grazing by his brother-in-law. He's mostly a stay at home dad so he's interested in fencing off some of the land and trying to grow something. Right now we are talking about tobacco and hops.

The thing with tobacco is that once it grows and you harvest the leaves, you still have to process it which can take up to a year before it's smokeable. We're going to start the seeds for about 2 dozen sets in a greenhouse next January and hope to have our first harvest by September of next year. 

nutmeg404

I have grown burley from seed, very easy to grow even in Mass., beautiful plants, lots of fun showing it off. But the stuff needs to be cured to get anything smokeable, a whole science. I just dried them and they might as well have been oak the way it smoked. Also grow hops, the beer is great. ..  FredS

Darmon

@pipeprofessor has a thread "growing your own" from July that quite a few have weighed in on, general consensus is growing is the easy part, its the curing that can be tricky. depending on what your looking to do with it after its grown.

PappyJoe

I must have missed that thread when I did a search.

PipeProfessor

It's okay @pappyjoe, @Darmon and I forgive you and your old man vision

PappyJoe

@pipeprofessor - just check out some of the older pipe forums and count the number of Penzance is great discussions they have.

Darmon

@pipeprofessor I think @pappyjoe is just falling into the stage where, like all grandpas they tend to repeat things   We, like all good youngsters should just nod/listen and have the same conversation again for their sake. 

PappyJoe

@darmon - you may be right. I keep telling people to bite me.

Darmon

LOL

+1 point to @pappyjoe

PipeProfessor

Hahaha! Plus two points for each @Darmon and @pappyjoe for making me laugh!

Woodsman

Someone at Pipechat did a whole series on growing and curing tobacco with illustrations if I remember.

Darmon

Not a bad start to the growing season, some bugs eating on them a little but all in all I'm excited to see how it turns out

PappyJoe

@Darmon Looks good! I bet the bugs that chewed on your plants soon died.

I'm no expert on tobacco plants but I've always thought they were a natural insecticide.

AnantaAndroscoggin

Whether I try the Browse to attach files, or just drag-and-drop, neither way is working to put the attachment files into this post.

I keep getting "The file failed to upload" for all of them, different sized & all.

RockyMountainBriar

The first four pics are from 2013.  The garage full of hanging leaf dried green (not enough humidity in Montana). I had to toss it😢. The remaining pictures are of the tobacco I grew in 2016 (from the seeds saved from the 2013 plants-I though they might be a bit more use to Montana the climate?).  I will point out that the weather cooperated in 2016, as we did not get a hard freeze well into November (not normal) but worked well for my tobacco processing. I will add some more “finished product” pics next.

RockyMountainBriar

Londy3

Wow! You guys are pros! How does the home grown taste?

RockyMountainBriar

These are a few pics of the cured/curing tobacco and my “plug press”.  The tobacco smokes like tobacco and not burning leaves like my 2013 batch that did not cure correctly.  The “snake” is a rope I twisted with  tobacco leaves I sprayed with bourbon.  The “sandwich” plug was two layers of the light leaf pressed with Malibu Rum and the dark steamed “cavendish” pressed with Meyers Dark Rum in the middle.  When I combined the two different plugs, I put a bit of Makers Mark Bourbon between the plug layers to help bind them, then put the “sandwich” back in the press for a few days.  Now I wouldn’t say this is top notch tobacco, but it is smokeable and not bad.  Not bad, especially for a 50 year old guy in Montana that had never even seen a tobacco plant before 2013.  I used my restored tobacco plug knife to slice off a few flakes.

RockyMountainBriar

A few pics of the steaming leaf “cavendish”, and the steamed leaves laid out to dry (kind of look like jerky).  After being dried out, I shredded some through my hand pasta maker with the spaghetti cutter roller (no, I do not use this shredder for pasta, just tobacco. 🙂

RockyMountainBriar

I made some cigars also, but sad to say they all molded and I had to toss them😢, all after aging them almost a year. They were rolled too tightly and with a little too much moisture in the leaves.   Although most of the problem occured when I changed my hygrometer.  I was reading temperature instead of humidity.  I was thinking the humidity was way low at 60-65,  and kept adding moisture to my Pelican “curing box”.... it was temperature I was watching and the humidity went way too high.  By the time I figured out I was reading the gauge incorrectly, they all molded, DAMN!    I made 24 cigars.  I also made the tempered cheveta tobacco knife in the pics.
Hey, they “looked” like cigars.  Lots of time and effort for naught.

mfresa

@RockyMountainBriar, you are a brave soul!!  My wife just put our seeds in the ground, so I'm looking forward to trying to cure something come fall.

RockyMountainBriar

Yea, growing it is pretty easy.  The curing is definitely a pain, especially here in Montana with like 20% humidity.  Like they say....it may be 100F in the summer.....but it’s a dry heat😏
I grew my first plants from seedlings I purchased online, the next batch I used the seeds from the first plants and started my own indoors, then transplanted them when they were about 4”-6” tall.  They transplant easily, when I started the seeds, I pulled the seedlings to thin them out and stuffed the bigger ones back in the seed pot.  I don’t think any of them died, even with that rough handling.  I think some were even pulled twice and they still grew....tough, tough, plants.

RockyMountainBriar

I just looked up the average humidity here in Billings, it is actually closer to 30%, still too dry to cure tobacco leaves without added humidity, at least for my attempts anyway.

RockyMountainBriar

In the fifth picture (the 2016 plants in the garden), you can see the “pea green” of the lower leaves indicating ripeness of those leaves.  The whole plants were mostly pea green a week or two later.  The plants in 2013 may not have ripened fully, which could have been some of my curing issues in 2013.  I would love to have a real tobacco farmer show me the ins and outs of growing and curing tobacco.  Seems like a closely guarded secret, as information, even on the internet, is few and far between.

RockyMountainBriar

@mfresa you will have to post your success here👍🏻🙂

mfresa

@RockyMountainBriar, will do.

Darmon

First Picture is Tennessee Red Leaf, The Second Picture is Bright Virginia.  Both are about 4ft tall and looking pretty heathly, Had a bout with some tobacco horned worms but we picked off a large coffee can full of the worms and fed them to the chickens and they seem to be doing quite well.  The worms only got the bright Virginias i'm suspecting the higher sugar content was more attractive to them?

Darmon

Correction,  First pic is the bright Virginia and the second pic is the Tennessee Red Leaf 

mfresa

Man, I'm way behind you guys.  Mine are only 6 inches high.

Londy3

.... that's what she said.

mfresa

@Londy3, LOL