Chillardbees Grow Em' Like A Pair 2015 Grow Blog (Season 4)

[chillardbee]

In 2013, I started my first grow blog here. At that time I had 40 hives and increased to 70, so i had plenty of time for tobacco. In 2014, I had 67 hives in the spring and increased to 112 hives, and still had time for one of the biggest seed years off of 143 varieties, I admit that time was getting a little tight.

But this year we had 105 hives into the spring and plan to get 240 by fall but the additional 400 nucs I'm making for sale plus all the wood wear I'll be making for lids, bottoms, and innercovers plus all the frames and supers (250 boxes and 2500 frames) that need to be pounded together, plus all the feeding I'll be doing to help the girls grow and get heavy for winter, Is going to make most things concerning the tobacco almost an after thought this year.

I just got to make it through to harvest.

 

[Knucklehead]

In 2013, I started my first grow blog here. At that time I had 40 hives and increased to 70, so i had plenty of time for tobacco. In 2014, I had 67 hives in the spring and increased to 112 hives, and still had time for one of the biggest seed years off of 143 varieties, I admit that time was getting a little tight.

But this year we had 105 hives into the spring and plan to get 240 by fall but the additional 400 nucs I'm making for sale plus all the wood wear I'll be making for lids, bottoms, and innercovers plus all the frames and supers (250 boxes and 2500 frames) that need to be pounded together, plus all the feeding I'll be doing to help the girls grow and get heavy for winter, Is going to make most things concerning the tobacco almost an after thought this year.

I just got to make it through to harvest.

Hang in there. You have your hands full right now, but things will even out eventually. Think how much work those bees are going to be doing.

 

[Chicken]

You could do like I do a lot..I'll do my gardening late into the evening...with my headlight...on my head....and of course mosquito spray all over me..

Good luck making the time..

 

[chillardbee]

Hard to believe that april 30th was my last post. It was shortly after that post that I thinned the plants, submerged them into lightly fertilized water and pressed the soil down a bit so that it didn't dry out so fast. Since then, the plants have had explosive growth. we've been having very good weather with a bit of rain here and there but mostly warm (border line hot) sunny days. we are starting to head into days now that could reach into the 90's or more and thats uncommon for our parts since we usually don't get that until july/august.

The plants are ready for transplanting and I'll make the time at somepoint this week to do that. I never did start any dark air cured varieties and although it's not too late, I think I'll pass on it just because I don't have the time for it. In fact, I will likely only have the bare minimum time to do the basic of growing this year but I should have more time later in july and into august.

I've only made half the nucs for the fella who buying them but he's have supply issues and so can't supply me with the queens and boxes in a timely manner. this piece mealing crap drives me nuts. I'll still be making them but I have to start thinking of my own increase and requeening as well too and all this type of crap cuts into my precious tobacco growing time. grumble, grumble, gripe, gripe.

 

[chillardbee]

Black plastic mulch is not worth the hassle. I'll make do with it this year but it was an incredible PITA to plant in. I've got 30 plants left out of the 300 needing to be transplanted.



The photos here were taken about 2 weeks ago.

 

[chillardbee]

So far, the Izmir seems to be winning the race, growing like nobodies busness. With the turkish baccy, I kept 2 per pot since I'm only growing 3 varieties.

I'm finally getting some water onto my baccy. I'm gonna do a foilage spray of fast ferts and a fertilize with 18-18-22 this evenig.

 

[DGBAMA]

My orientals took off fast this year too.

 

[chillardbee]

So dang glad to have everything planted, watered, fertilized, and foilage sprayed. although it was done in peices over the course of 2 weeks, I hope everything kind of catches up and get back to equal growing.

I think I'll need some heavy soil management next year, which I'll start just as soon as the last baccy is harvested this year.

 

[ProfessorPangloss]

If your soil has been bare for a while, a cover crop might be an easy management tool after this season. They really do everything for you, provided you can turn them over. I found an article about "green manure" and it was all about how clover and rye make your soil awesome for cheap.

 

[chillardbee]

I would dearly love to do that but the park manager here where we live would freak 7 different ways over that. funny how he's alright about my tobacco though. I'm thinking about buying some alfalfa to turn into the soil along with some manure, whatever I can scrounge up.

 

[DGBAMA]

I got a bagger for the mower and will be piling up all my grass clippings to till in this fall.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I got a bagger for the mower and will be piling up all my grass clippings to till in this fall.

Man, if they're nice and moist, those clippings will be steaming hot in two days. Keep that pile tall, rather than spread out.

 

[ProfessorPangloss]

I would dearly love to do that but the park manager here where we live would freak 7 different ways over that. funny how he's alright about my tobacco though. I'm thinking about buying some alfalfa to turn into the soil along with some manure, whatever I can scrounge up.

That'll work. There are a billion things that would, and I'm sure you can find something native. Clover? Vetch?

 

[chillardbee]

I'm thinking more in the way of buying the alfalfa in bale form and soaking it for a bit to let it start to the point of compost and then tilling it into the soil. What ever plans I will come up with, either way, will be started in the fall this year after this harvest is done. It'll be important since next years grow is all about size, fewer plants, bigger spacing, and I've been kicking around the idea of crossing some varieties this year like African red X lemon and Barnett special X haronova and maybe Prilep X Izmir but only growing 6 varieties. Since I'll be going for size, I might not be able to resist the urge to grow a half row of White mammoth that, in 2013, had grown to be the most massive plants i've ever grown, considering the conditions.

The grow this year is finally shaping up. After having a bit of rain, giving a good dosage of fert and compost tea, and fast n gro foilagec spray, a bit more watering, and in the last 3 days being sunny and hot, they have all turned lush green and are getting ready for the growth spurt. Tomorrow eve I'll water them again just to keep the soil moist while the roots are still spreading. The way I've been watering is by using a heavy trickle and counting slow to 10 while the water works its way under the plastic and into the soil. I'm glad to have the plastic on the ground since it diffenately is helping conserve water and keeping everything from drying too fast.

I got to post a pic soon.

 

[chillardbee]

So I was a bit concerned about the haronova I'm growing because it kind of is starting ti look like the same leaf type as you'd find on samson. The stem of the leaf leaves the stalk much the same way as samson or bursa. About 1/2" and then the leaf fans out almost 90 deg., has a tight curve into an elongated spade type leaf. It doesn't have the gumminess of regular burley and really, it doesn't look like burley.

I have looked at pics of haronova and indeed, what I am growing is Haronova. It's interesting of all the different types of burley, how they have different leaf structures and growth but if you ever try growing Haronova, it's a world apart from what you'd consider burley.

 

[deluxestogie]

I was thinking that the name, Haronova, was Russian, with emphasis on the second syllable, but it seems to be the combination of Harrow and nova.

Haronova was developed at the Harrow, Ontario Ag Research Station in 1941, by the same folks who developed Harrow Velvet burley.

http://archive.org/stream/historyofresearc10ward/historyofresearc10ward_djvu.txt

This is a clipping from a 1952 Canadian Statesman, a Bowmanville, Ontario newspaper:

http://images.ourontario.ca/Partners/ClaPL/CLaPL002714784pf_0017.pdf

I guess you'll get to discover how it smokes.

Bob

 

[chillardbee]

Jessica (JessicaNicot) sent me an email of info on the plant. I found this site http://www.mocavo.ca/A-History-of-the-Research-Station-Harrow-Ontario-1909-1974-Volume-10/776756/54 that has some interesting history of the burley development in Ontario. I think I posted that exact same clipping else where on the forum too Bob or a link to it with the whole page that it was on because I remember reading some of the adds that were on that page.

 

[chillardbee]

I got myself a new organic fert to try this year. BioThrive plant food Grow formulation 4-3-3 made by General Organics. Heres a link to the label http://generalhydroponics.com/site/gh/docs/prod_labels/BioThriveGrow.pdf . I've been I fed and watered the plants today and the spurt is on. We have had really dry and hot weather and I've been so busy in the bees that I've not been able to water them regularly but yesterday and today I spent the whole day feeding and watering and you could almost hear and see the plants growing.

I'll give them another good watering tomorrow morning.

 

[Mrs BeeKeeper]

PS - that fertlizer smells like poo.

 

[ArizonaDave]

PS - that fertlizer smells like poo.

LOL, it probably has quite a big amount of that I'm sure, being "Organic".