deluxestogie Grow Log 2014

[deluxestogie]

Your Florida Sumatra looks promising wrapper.

That particular bed, alongside the house, is in shade for the first half of every day, then gets double sun (reflection from the white siding) for each afternoon. I don't quite understand it, but it seems to be ideal for wrappers. I grew Machu Picchu Havana there in 2013, and the leaves were spectacular.

My greatest problem alongside the house is that I have trouble reaching the grass that likes to sprout up along the foundation, even when the plants are tiny. I can't stand in the bed itself, since it is too soft, so I have to lean on the house with one hand, while pulling the grass with the other--very tiring. As a result, some tall grass remains, and allows crickets to climb it, and munch on the lower leaves of the tobacco plants closest to the house.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Tobacco Growers of Dune

I guess Phoenix would be more like the desert planet, Dune, but here in SW Virginia, hornworms are more of a threat than sandworms.

I walk the tobacco twice a day, carefully searching for wormsign. Not so much for the peppers and tomatoes.

Bob

 

[chillardbee]

Worm sign? your not fremen by chance are you Bob? (referance to Frank Herberts book Dune)

 

[deluxestogie]

Herbert's Dune novels, and the film, Lawrence of Arabia, misled me into seeing Saudi Arabia as a charming place, when I was first deployed there in 1983. It took a second deployment there to finally recognize it for the worthless, horrid wasteland that it is. Fiction does that. Herbert was inspired by "nice" sand dunes in Oregon. I'm not sure if he ever came face to face with a hornworm.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

I've walked the tobacco twice today. Not a single hornworm. Not a single hornworm egg. I believe my wave 2 is over.

Bob

 

[leverhead]

...I believe my wave 2 is over.

Bob

It's bad luck to be superstitious, but you might knock on wood.

 

[cigarchris]

I haven't found any horn worms this year (only had a few last year), knock on wood, but I have found a few worms similar in shape and size, without the horn, and a darker color. I'm assuming they're from some other type of moth. They get the same treatment you recommend, Bob. Also, knock on wood with my fingers crossed, no aphids yet. Lost almost a third of the leaf from my eight VA bright plants last summer from aphid gunk.

 

[Jitterbugdude]

So our plan is working... Everyone sending their bugs to Brownthumb's house. I have to run another batch of Japanese beetles up to him tonight.

 

[Brown Thumb]

Jeesh that ain't fair. But the Bags are Working. I hit the Baccy with Tricactizide once and have no other problems this yr. except stink bugs and the Damn jap beetles.

 

[deluxestogie]

It's bad luck to be superstitious, but you might knock on wood.

I forgot the knocking part. Today, I found no fewer than about 30 hornworm neonates, as well as a half dozen eggs. It really was impressive. I walked the tobacco in the morning: nothing. I walked the tobacco in the afternoon, and BOOM! I'm afraid I sent them on their way to hornworm heaven without allowing them to be baptized by the afternoon thundershower. And they had so much to look forward to. I am a heartless bastard. And all the eggs were scrambled.

Bob

 

[DGBAMA]

And here I was thinking the moths were nocturnal. ? Scratch that theory.

 

[deluxestogie]

When I see no new pinholes in any leaves, I'm less inclined to lift and inspect beneath every leaf of every plant. It's a major source of backache. My guess is that there were many hornworm eggs lurking beneath the placid leaves in the morning, and that they all decided to hatch during mid-day. So the eggs were likely laid during the previous night. Sphinx moths are definitely nocturnal.

Bob

 

[Chicken]

looks like its time to load the SPRAYER..... and do some mass killin!!!!!!!

 

[deluxestogie]

looks like its time to load the SPRAYER..... and do some mass killin!!!!!!!

That's so impersonal. I kill my hornworms one at a time. Very gratifying.

Bob

 

[Chicken]

Lol.. But you might miss some of them that. Way.BH

 

[deluxestogie]

The Vuelta Abajo is doing nicely this season.

Below, you can see that the Long Red produces leaves that are significantly broader than those of PA Red. Neither has put on much height yet, which will be another interesting comparison.

Yay for Florida Sumatra. I love this bed for growing wrapper. It gets full sun amplified off the white siding, but only for half of each day. I've often thought of putting up a shade structure against the house here, but the prospect of fussing with it for mowing has discouraged the idea.

I'm supposed to be comparing 4 different Olor varieties (1 from the DR, and 3 from Puerto Rico), but, as you can see below, the effect of a large, nearby Maple tree, which does not shade the plants, seems to be dominating. The far right of the bed is just barely beneath the outer edge of the tree's canopy, so I suspect the growth differential is due to the tree's roots--at the outer drip margin.

Finally, an answer to the question we've all been asking ourselves. Do fireflies (lightening bugs) eat tobacco? There is no question that they spend the doldrums of each summer day resting on foliage, and munching it from time to time. I see this on cherry, apricot, pear, apple, blackberries, raspberries and grapes. Given my double standards with regard to insects, I always give them a pass--while savagely killing every Japanese beetle in sight.

I've occasionally seen them on tobacco. But they are usually posing in a manner shown below.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Fireflies

Have you ever tried to photograph fireflies (lightening bugs) lifting off from the grass at dusk? The sight is wondrous--sometimes dozens flashing in synchrony. But snapping a photo of it is something that can really challenge one's camera technique.

Fireflies at dusk.

The problem is that the photo exposure must be at a low ISO setting and a slow shutter speed, so the camera must be mounted on a tripod or some other fixed object. To prevent motion blur from pressing the shutter button, I use the delay shutter timer. But, the fireflies blink only momentarily, and in irregularly timed waves.

For the photo above, I used a tiny, portable, backpacker's tripod Velcro'd to the wrought iron of my front porch, set the timer, and repeatedly took random shots of the same location--20 of them. Out of those 20 exposures, a mere 3 of them revealed any fireflies. Of those, only 1 was anything to look at.

Because of the peculiar lighting, no standard balance of lightness and contrast adjustments to the photo looked anything like what my eye saw. I fiddled with the settings, until the photo looked like the reality--sort of.

When I looked at my one decent firefly photo again this morning, it seemed better than I recalled it being last night. But, alas, many of the bright dots turned out to be just dust on my computer screen. After cleaning the screen, what you see above is all that was left.

Perhaps the evanescent beauty of rising fireflies should be left to the magic of the human eye--a real-time experience.

Bob

 

[chillardbee]

What kind of camera are you using Bob? If you have manual settings to control on a DSLR, I would suggest 800 and 1600 ISO, Focal ratio of 1 to 3 on a 35mm to 55mm lens with an exposure time of 5 to 15 seconds. Moon light might hamper the shot or make it look daylightish but the the fireflies would look great although they would show up as streaks on that time exposure which is not an entirely bad thing. Keep trying Bob, I'm eager to see more photos of fire flies.

I should mention too that trying different settings systematically will help find the right setting eventually and now with having the digital technology we don't have to worry about wasted film.

 

[deluxestogie]

My camera is a DSLR without the SLR. It's the size of a pack of 100mm cigarettes. It does have something that resembles a lens, and 4x optical zoom, plus a catalog of settings of what the designer decided he liked to photograph. The higher ISO settings result in a much grainier picture. Since the fireflies themselves are just bright little grains in the photo, that's a problem.

Selfie of itself. Macro setting, mirror shot, flipped in Photoshop. Almost as creepy as the HAL 9000.

If it can't be captured with a $100 camera, then it's out of my league.

Bob

 

[chillardbee]

Ha ha, It would be creepeir if the camera spoke and siad "Sorry Bob, But I can't let you do that" in hal's voice. Some point n' shoot cams are still pretty good though, but I'm also quite impressed with some of the pics my wife gets with her Iphone. I actually use her phone quite a bit this year to photo the baccy since it automatically goes to the drop box then onto our computer which saves the step of downloading them from the camera.