Thread: Any fellow brother of the leaf in here?

Originally Posted by TheGeek

I have tinkered with the idea of growing my own baccy, so I think I am going to give it a go, and when I say me, I mean the wife because she's the plant whisperer.

If nothing else, I might end up with something I can shred and puff in the pipe

I think I may be a bit limited in my growing season being in Scotland but it's worth ago for a few quid of seeds.

Geek

I think there might be some prohibitions or restrictions on unlicensed growing of tobacco in the UK, not sure. Be careful to not run afoul of the law! Or, at the least, try not to get caught. Nosy neighbors could spell trouble. A half acre of tobacco would not escape aerial observation. But a half dozen plants can give you a year's worth of pipe or cigarette tobacco. For general use, a mainstream Burley would probably suit you fine.

The hardest part is starting the seed. The sprouting seeds are extremely delicate, fragile, and sensitive to environmental factors.
https://www.amazon.com/Jiffy-5262-Wa...-garden&sr=1-1

The above kit works great for starting tobacco seeds. You want the 70 place, self watering kit. It has an absorbent mat underneath the puck tray that helps with water retention. Fill from one of the empty corner holes until water is up over the "ramp". You will know it when you see it. You MUST water sprouting tobacco seeds from below! Anyway, first, add water to the system and keep adding water until the peat pucks have absorbed all that they can, they are fully expanded, and there is water remaining in the lower tray. Sprinkle a couple hundred seeds out on a white paper plate. Lick the end of a wooden toothpick and use it to pick up a single seed. Place it on top of the puck, on the top surface, not in the central hole and not on the web-like "biodegradeable" fabric cladding around the puck. Pick up another, the same way, and place it 120 degrees around from the first, and then a third. A tiny wiping motion is usually needed to leave the seed behind on the puck. Do that to all that you intend to use. I suggest twice as many pucks as you intend to grow into adult plants. Three seeds per puck. You will thin to one per puck when you transplant. Do not bury them or cover them. Leave them on the surface of the moist peat puck. If you have a good loupe such as the excellent Belomo 10x Triplet or pocket microscope such as the Carson Micro-Brite, you can see the seeds begin to swell and split in a day or three, and then a little stub of a root will emerge, soon sprouting hairy rootlets. At this stage the sprouts need to start getting some sun exposure every day. Tobacco seeds do not contain ANY nutrition for the seedlings and they must begin photosynthesis right away, or die. You must never for a moment let them dry out, though. In another week or so you should have the first green leave spreading their arms to the sun, and they should be standing up, and stuffing their roots into the peat. When they have their second set of true leaves, unwrap the pucks carefully, and plant them in cups or pots or bags big enough for roots to go at least 4" deep. Keep them well watered and give them lots of sun. Don't let them get cold and don't expose them to high temperatures, either. Gradually leave them outdoors for longer and longer, in less and less ideal conditions, to toughen the seedlings. By the time they are 6" tall, you should be transplanting them into your garden. Spray immediately with BT or Spinosad. BT is a bacteria that makes caterpillars which feed on tobacco leaves sicken and die. Spinosad is a little more broad spectrum. Neither is particularly toxic to humans and neither will affect the taste of tobacco even up to the day of harvest, if used as directed. Fertilize as you see fit but absolutely avoid all chlorides or any sort of chlorine. It will make your tobacco burn poorly.

That's the hard part. Now just wait two or three months. When the first leaves near the base turn completely yellow, pick them. Those are the "mud lugs" and you can wash and cure them, or toss them, as you see fit. But the next leaves up from the lugs are the Seco grade, very important as wrappers and as blending agents or to bulk out a filler blend. Pick when they get yellow mottle or spots, or curl at the tips or get brown at the edges. You can pick earlier but waiting until fully mature gives better flavor. It also invites bugs to eat them. Neem oil is good against aphids but don't spray this within a couple weeks of harvest. Luckily aphids do not cause heavy damage. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are your main villains. Ladybugs can help control aphids, and you can buy them by the thousand or the million, online.

When the plant starts to grow a flower top, break it off. From that point you must monitor the plants closely for suckers. Those are little leaf or stem buds that sprout up where the big leaves meet the main stalk. Break them off. You want all energy sent to the big harvestable leaves. If you grow only one variety you could let one plant flower, and go to seed, so to not have to buy more seed.

Most tobacco varieties grow fairly tall, 5 to as much as 9 feet tall. Blow-downs are common, and sometimes a plant will just lay over onto the ground, so be ready to stake them up as needed.

Tobacco can carry a disease that is quite harmful to tomatoes and some other vegetables. Most gardeners ensure that there is a good buffer area between tobacco and tomatoes.

When you pick your tobacco, string the leaves on stainless steel fishing leader wire or aluminum electric fence wire. Space them an inch or two apart, and hang in your tobacco barn. In a month or two, you should have color cured tobacco. The moisture slowly evaporates and the central stem and ribs shrink. The leaves will turn from green to yellow or brown. Leave them hang for up to two months. You want reasonable but not excessive humidity and temperature, and if there are slight daily swings of each, so much the better. Monitor your hanging leaves daily, for caterpillars or the damage that they cause. Your first sign sometimes is the caterpillar's droppings on the floor, especially from the Tobacco Hornworm, which grows to 3" long and eats about 50x its weight in tobacco per day, with a single specimen able to ruin 100 or more leaves. They stand out in UV light at night, just sayin. Pick them off while still tiny, and squash them without mercy.

I don't use an active fermentation process. You can, and maybe you should. I don't. I pack my color cured leaves in airtight bins, and open them once every two months or so, to let any generated ammonia escape, and eventually I end up packing them in 2 gallon zip lock bags, or bigger for bigger leaves. If the leaves crack, mist them LIGHTLY with water to bring them back into case, which is where they are neither soggy and floppy, nor dry and crackly. Too damp and you get mold. After a year you should have a very smokable product though I have rolled and smoked literally right off the plant, in the case of the lower lugs that cured on the stem. Aging past 5 years generally is thought to be counterproductive, and less than 6 months doesn't really do anything.

Pipe smokers often prefer a tobacco that has gone through the Cavendish process, or that has had additions of honey, molasses, glycerine, or other moistening agents, and flavorings such as apple or cherry byproducts or essence. You can also add small amounts of flavoring tobacco such as Latakia or other Syrian or Macedonian or Turkish varieties. Louisiana Perique that has actually undergone the Perique process can be a very distinctive addition to pipe blends. Go easy, that is very powerful stuff, the true Perique. You might also find that a well cured and shredded Burley in proper case suits you just fine, and is especially appropriate in a corn cob pipe or other more rustic sort of smoking appliance. Many Cuban seed cigar varieties have been used in pipe blends, too. Burley typically makes up about 40% of a cigarette blend, I am told, but no reason why you can't roll straight Burley. I would go with a darker Burley than the Golden Burley that I grew this year for cigar wrapper, or both a light and a dark.

There are lots of online resources where you can dive deep into the subject. I am FAR from expert, this being only my second grow and second rolling year, but that thumbnail above ought to get you started asking the questions from the experts that you might want answered.

Originally Posted by Axeman556

Thank you for the insight !! I had no idea burley was related to any of those strains. To say that you've been able to plant , grow, ferment, age an then roll and smoke with any amount of success is nothing short of impressive . I tip my hat to you sir!! Can you tell any difference in the tobacco compared to say where it's normally grown due to different soil conditions and mineral content?

Neither do I have a sufficiently educated and sensitive palate, nor am I sufficiently pretentious, that I can say definitely where a tobacco is grown by tasting, smelling, or seeing it, with any certainty. Some can, or say that they can. I can tell the difference between tobacco that sucks and tobacco that tastes and smells great, though. The soil and climate does make a difference, and affects the product in about equal measure with the strain's genetic heritage and the care taken by grower, harvester, and processor with the product.

Keep in mind that Burley is a family of varieties, not just one strain. And lineage can get very mixed up. Different species can and have been crossed together. Most cultivated tobacco is Nicotiana Tabacum but there is also N. Rustica, N. Alata, N, Sylvestris, and others. and there are strains of N. Tabacum that are grown by indigenous people that have little resemblance to commercial varieties, and heirloom varieties grown for home use or as a localized cottage industry that are of little use to the commercial grower or the home grower looking for a commercial grade product. The family tree can be pretty crazy and mixed up. Some is grown for ceremonial use, some for ornamental use, some just because the flowers smell nice, and some grows wild if you know where to look, not that you would want to smoke it.

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

I think there might be some prohibitions or restrictions on unlicensed growing of tobacco in the UK, not sure. Be careful to not run afoul of the law! Or, at the least, try not to get caught. Nosy neighbors could spell trouble. A half acre of tobacco would not escape aerial observation. But a half dozen plants can give you a year's worth of pipe or cigarette tobacco. For general use, a mainstream Burley would probably suit you fine.

The hardest part is starting the seed. The sprouting seeds are extremely delicate, fragile, and sensitive to environmental factors.
https://www.amazon.com/Jiffy-5262-Wa...-garden&sr=1-1

The above kit works great for starting tobacco seeds. You want the 70 place, self watering kit. It has an absorbent mat underneath the puck tray that helps with water retention. Fill from one of the empty corner holes until water is up over the "ramp". You will know it when you see it. You MUST water sprouting tobacco seeds from below! Anyway, first, add water to the system and keep adding water until the peat pucks have absorbed all that they can, they are fully expanded, and there is water remaining in the lower tray. Sprinkle a couple hundred seeds out on a white paper plate. Lick the end of a wooden toothpick and use it to pick up a single seed. Place it on top of the puck, on the top surface, not in the central hole and not on the web-like "biodegradeable" fabric cladding around the puck. Pick up another, the same way, and place it 120 degrees around from the first, and then a third. A tiny wiping motion is usually needed to leave the seed behind on the puck. Do that to all that you intend to use. I suggest twice as many pucks as you intend to grow into adult plants. Three seeds per puck. You will thin to one per puck when you transplant. Do not bury them or cover them. Leave them on the surface of the moist peat puck. If you have a good loupe such as the excellent Belomo 10x Triplet or pocket microscope such as the Carson Micro-Brite, you can see the seeds begin to swell and split in a day or three, and then a little stub of a root will emerge, soon sprouting hairy rootlets. At this stage the sprouts need to start getting some sun exposure every day. Tobacco seeds do not contain ANY nutrition for the seedlings and they must begin photosynthesis right away, or die. You must never for a moment let them dry out, though. In another week or so you should have the first green leave spreading their arms to the sun, and they should be standing up, and stuffing their roots into the peat. When they have their second set of true leaves, unwrap the pucks carefully, and plant them in cups or pots or bags big enough for roots to go at least 4" deep. Keep them well watered and give them lots of sun. Don't let them get cold and don't expose them to high temperatures, either. Gradually leave them outdoors for longer and longer, in less and less ideal conditions, to toughen the seedlings. By the time they are 6" tall, you should be transplanting them into your garden. Spray immediately with BT or Spinosad. BT is a bacteria that makes caterpillars which feed on tobacco leaves sicken and die. Spinosad is a little more broad spectrum. Neither is particularly toxic to humans and neither will affect the taste of tobacco even up to the day of harvest, if used as directed. Fertilize as you see fit but absolutely avoid all chlorides or any sort of chlorine. It will make your tobacco burn poorly.

That's the hard part. Now just wait two or three months. When the first leaves near the base turn completely yellow, pick them. Those are the "mud lugs" and you can wash and cure them, or toss them, as you see fit. But the next leaves up from the lugs are the Seco grade, very important as wrappers and as blending agents or to bulk out a filler blend. Pick when they get yellow mottle or spots, or curl at the tips or get brown at the edges. You can pick earlier but waiting until fully mature gives better flavor. It also invites bugs to eat them. Neem oil is good against aphids but don't spray this within a couple weeks of harvest. Luckily aphids do not cause heavy damage. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are your main villains. Ladybugs can help control aphids, and you can buy them by the thousand or the million, online.

When the plant starts to grow a flower top, break it off. From that point you must monitor the plants closely for suckers. Those are little leaf or stem buds that sprout up where the big leaves meet the main stalk. Break them off. You want all energy sent to the big harvestable leaves. If you grow only one variety you could let one plant flower, and go to seed, so to not have to buy more seed.

Most tobacco varieties grow fairly tall, 5 to as much as 9 feet tall. Blow-downs are common, and sometimes a plant will just lay over onto the ground, so be ready to stake them up as needed.

Tobacco can carry a disease that is quite harmful to tomatoes and some other vegetables. Most gardeners ensure that there is a good buffer area between tobacco and tomatoes.

When you pick your tobacco, string the leaves on stainless steel fishing leader wire or aluminum electric fence wire. Space them an inch or two apart, and hang in your tobacco barn. In a month or two, you should have color cured tobacco. The moisture slowly evaporates and the central stem and ribs shrink. The leaves will turn from green to yellow or brown. Leave them hang for up to two months. You want reasonable but not excessive humidity and temperature, and if there are slight daily swings of each, so much the better. Monitor your hanging leaves daily, for caterpillars or the damage that they cause. Your first sign sometimes is the caterpillar's droppings on the floor, especially from the Tobacco Hornworm, which grows to 3" long and eats about 50x its weight in tobacco per day, with a single specimen able to ruin 100 or more leaves. They stand out in UV light at night, just sayin. Pick them off while still tiny, and squash them without mercy.

I don't use an active fermentation process. You can, and maybe you should. I don't. I pack my color cured leaves in airtight bins, and open them once every two months or so, to let any generated ammonia escape, and eventually I end up packing them in 2 gallon zip lock bags, or bigger for bigger leaves. If the leaves crack, mist them LIGHTLY with water to bring them back into case, which is where they are neither soggy and floppy, nor dry and crackly. Too damp and you get mold. After a year you should have a very smokable product though I have rolled and smoked literally right off the plant, in the case of the lower lugs that cured on the stem. Aging past 5 years generally is thought to be counterproductive, and less than 6 months doesn't really do anything.

Pipe smokers often prefer a tobacco that has gone through the Cavendish process, or that has had additions of honey, molasses, glycerine, or other moistening agents, and flavorings such as apple or cherry byproducts or essence. You can also add small amounts of flavoring tobacco such as Latakia or other Syrian or Macedonian or Turkish varieties. Louisiana Perique that has actually undergone the Perique process can be a very distinctive addition to pipe blends. Go easy, that is very powerful stuff, the true Perique. You might also find that a well cured and shredded Burley in proper case suits you just fine, and is especially appropriate in a corn cob pipe or other more rustic sort of smoking appliance. Many Cuban seed cigar varieties have been used in pipe blends, too. Burley typically makes up about 40% of a cigarette blend, I am told, but no reason why you can't roll straight Burley. I would go with a darker Burley than the Golden Burley that I grew this year for cigar wrapper, or both a light and a dark.

There are lots of online resources where you can dive deep into the subject. I am FAR from expert, this being only my second grow and second rolling year, but that thumbnail above ought to get you started asking the questions from the experts that you might want answered.

Thanks for that,

Will need to reread to digest it all.

Nah, there's no tobacco growing restrictions in the UK, you just can't sell it, not likely with a few plants lol.

I actually quite like just plain old twist baccy on my pipe, so may e need to get a technique for firing it at home.

Geek

I do wonder though, how does one know how much leaf for a specific sized cigar? For instance how much for a Churchill as opposed to a panatella?

Geek

Originally Posted by TheGeek

I do wonder though, how does one know how much leaf for a specific sized cigar? For instance how much for a Churchill as opposed to a panatella?

Geek

For a Churchill, use more filler. For a Panatella or Corona or other small cigar, use less. A bigger cigar needs a bigger binder and wrapper. A smaller one can get by witl a smaller binder and a smaller wrapper. You can use two binders or two wrappers either in tandem or one after the other or one on top of the other, as you see fit. You can even tandem wrap a cigar with a light and a dark wrapper for a barber pole look.

There's no formula except what you make up yourself. Different batches of filler have leaves of different thickness. Different leaves have different sizes. Light case will have less water weight. Full case will have more water weight.

Usually, you just start with the filler leaves that you want outside the bundle, depending on your personal recipe. Add leaves that belong more toward the center. Most rollers will have Seco on the outside and Viso or Ligero on the inside, due to their different burning characteristics but there is no law that you must follow or have your cigar card revoked. When it feels like you have the amount of filler you want, tear off the ends and put them on top, tips pointed inward toward the middle, and roll up your bundle. Then roll it in your binder to set the basic size, shape, and tightness of draw. Classically the final layer, the wrapper, is only for sealing and cosmetic purposes but I often use the wrapper to further refine the shape and adjust tension, because I roll pretty much only figurados. I cut my wrapper into an S shape, to conform to the taper at either end, and the wrapper does a lot of the work of shaping the tips in my cigars.

There is a forum with a lot of growers and rollers at fairtradetobacco.com you might have a look at. It is sponsored, and posts are sometimes heavily editorialized to favor certain suppliers, so I don't hang out there as much as I probably ought to. There are other forums with fewer members or more emphasis on smoking factory rolled cigars. Their preferred leaf supplier is Whole Leaf Tobacco and they have good products including good kits. I have had better luck with Leaf Only but WLT is actually pretty good. There are members/sponsors that sell seeds and leaf, too.

https://www.leafonly.com/cigar-tobac...f/tobacco-kits

A kit is a great way to get started. There are instructions and links to videos on the leafonly.com website. The FAQ at fairtradetobacco.com has a lot of good info, too.

Another thing. As a beginner, don't fall into the trap of buying a mold and trying to roll a cigar of a precise length, shape, gauge, etc. Just grab some bakky and roll, and try to get the tension correct and get a good draw and an even burn. Trying to make a conformal cigar and getting the burn and draw right is just overwhelming when just starting out. If you end up with a 42ga instead of a 34ga, who cares? Correct the filler amount and thereby the bundle size on the next one, and see what you get. I don't even own a mold and I don't want one. My stogies come out purposely in an old school double perfecto shape, mostly because some early attempts just came out that way. I find my personal shape to be easy for me to roll and get right. I don't shoot for a particular gauge or length, just a particular draw and burn, and overall shape. I like the big fat middle for the mighty volume of excellent cool smoke. I like the pointy foot because it lights easily with a single match, even a big fat bomber. I like the tapered head so I don't have a massive sausage like stogie clamped in my jaws. The bite is much easier when it tapers down to about a 40 to 44 gauge. It just works for me. Lately I roll a bit shorter than before, so my smoking session can be a bit shorter and not leave a depressingly large and wasteful butt in the ashtray. I dislike relighting a cigar that has been out for long enough to cool and the smoke and vapors condense inside. The tapered head also reduces waste. The discarded butt contains less tobacco. But many rollers find a parejo, or straight sided cigar easier to roll and more convenient to store and age. Parejo rollers often use a mold so that a rolled box looks more like a factory box, and in fact factory rollers almost always use a mold. Once the bundle is in the binder, it is too late to add or subtract filler, and when it goes in the mold, the mold can change the draw. Skilled factory rollers get it right 99% of the time and when not, they smoke their mistakes. As a home roller you can disassemble and re-roll but I prefer not to do that.

You might well intend to roll a Corona and end up with a Robusto or a Toro. Smoke it and enjoy it! Don't worry about the CSLD. (Chicken Stuff Little Details)

After putting down god knows how many seeds, dotted around the house and greenhouse. I have for all my efforts, one tiny sprouted plant.

I shall nurture him in the hope he will grow into a towering baccy plant, but to be honest, I reckon I am a bit late in the year, and just wanted to experiment to see where was good to germinate (my study window ledge). If it comes to anything I might get a bit of baccy for my pipe lol.

Geek

Originally Posted by TheGeek

After putting down god knows how many seeds, dotted around the house and greenhouse. I have for all my efforts, one tiny sprouted plant.

I shall nurture him in the hope he will grow into a towering baccy plant, but to be honest, I reckon I am a bit late in the year, and just wanted to experiment to see where was good to germinate (my study window ledge). If it comes to anything I might get a bit of baccy for my pipe lol.

Geek

LOL that IS the hardest part! The seeds are tiny, the sprouts are tiny, and they MUST remain moist and MUST get sunshine immediately or perish. The seeds, unlike most seeds, have no energy supply contained inside for the embryo. The sproutlet must begin doing photo synthesis right away, or, you guessed it, DIE.

Watering has probably killed more tobacco sprouts than there are stars in the sky. Watering washes them away, since seeds must be sown on top of the soil and absolutely not buried. That's why I like the Jiffy Self Watering Greenhouse Kit so much, with the peat moss pucks. They suck up the water from underneath and keep the seed moist, and you don't have to top water at all. When they are about an inch tall, you can remove the wrapper from the puck and stick it right in on top of a cup or pot of good potting or seed starting mixture. Once they are about two inches tall you can start leaving them outside 24/7.

Tobacco is pretty hardy once your seedlings are aobut 6" tall and you stick them in the ground. It seems like from knee high to waist high takes only a couple of weeks, and before you know it your baccy is 8' tall, depending on variety.