Once I've sawed them into pieces light enough to drag with the lawn tractor, they will go to one of my brush piles, to further encourage the local critters. More critters = more predators = fewer mice.
Bob
Deluxestogie Grow Log 2022
- Thread starter deluxestogie
- Start date
Bob
Any idea on the fungi hanging out there?Relaxing Retirement
This morning, before my coffee, I went out to the shed, and stripped all the remaining tobacco: 3 large, overstuffed bags from the hanging stalks (Corojo 99), and 3 smaller bags of strung leaf. Whew!
We had a thunderstorm pass through late yesterday afternoon. While sitting out on my porch two hours later, I heard a loud crash. I walked around the front of the house, in the fading light of dusk, and saw that the huge maple branch scheduled to land on my bedroom had missed its mark, and, in fact, had missed everything. It just dropped a 25-foot long hunk onto the yard. It was too dark to go back out with the camera, so I waited until morning.
First thing this morning, I noticed that a 15-foot long branch (~4" thick at the base) had dropped during the night from a different maple tree in the back yard. [I suppose the conservative vs. liberal members of each maple tree had to bicker for hours after the storm had already passed, in order to decide whether or not it had been a severe enough storm to bring down branches.]
The back yard branch:
The front yard branch:
Bob
PressuredLeaf
Well-Known Member
Kind of looks like a ganoderma species, but I thought they preferred hemlock. Looks like what we used to call “writing fungus” when I was a kid. We used to pick them and write on the soft side about our summer adventures. We had some going all they way back to the 70’s at our cabin.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
Bob
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
The colour dial is all wrong. It turns red at 100, but blue at 50. It should be red at 80 and blue at 40.
The color dial is so old, it has faded.
Bob
Bob
While exploring the background and history of certain Japanese cigar varieties, I was surprised to see that they have petiolate leaves, that look something like Samsun. They also look suspiciously like the Ainaro (collected by @Tutu in Timor Leste) that I have grown. @Tutu classes it as a "dark sun-cured" variety.
The Japanese military occupied what is now Timor Leste for four years during WW2. During that time, they took advantage of what was essentially slave labor, for whatever tasks they chose. [The documentation of the occupation that I have been able to locate tend to focus on egregious rights abuses, rather than something as mundane as tobacco.] Might the Japanese have cultivated Japanese tobacco there during that stretch of time? Could @Tutu have stumbled into a tiny remnant of such a cultivation?
With regard to my previous testing of my Ainaro, it behaves similar to an air-cured Virginia type, when blended for a pipe. Ainaro also cooks into a nice Cavendish for pipe blending.
This Ainaro puro, now that I'm wondering about its possible derivation from a Japanese cigar variety, tastes slightly acidic, though with a relatively mild and enjoyable aroma. That might describe a cigar variety that was sun-cured, rather than air-cured. Kilning and two years of aging would not remedy the prior sun-curing of a cigar variety.
Since I am currently growing Ainaro, I will air-cure some of it, and see whether or not it is actually a cigar variety—an historic freak.
Bob
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
Maybe there's a common ancestor to the petiolate tobaccos found in these two locations.
That is certainly possible. Only genetic analysis might (only might) clarify that question. The Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch traders carried indiscriminate varieties of tobacco seed all over the world. I would assume that petiolate leaf attachment vs sessile leaf attachment can be determined by many different allele hiccups in Nicotiana tabacum's allo-polyploid mess of a genome.
Bob
I watch starling murmurations from my front porch every year. This evening, as the starlings lifted from the pasture, and swirled to a new landing site, I noticed a single, entirely white bird—an albino starling! They are too far away, and move too quickly for a photo.
Bob
Bob
Prilep 66-9/7 is always gratifying to grow.
Above is a picture of my nunnery. They were hoping for an apology visit from Papa Bob, because of his neglect during this growing season.
Bob
Wing Walker
Bob
Bob
willgodwin
Well-Known Member
Yeah that Prilep looks really cool.
Also, the albino Starling sighting is AMAZING! What a sight that must have been.
Also, the albino Starling sighting is AMAZING! What a sight that must have been.
Well, Bobby, what did you do in kindergarten today?
First, we had to walk the tobacco, and tear off some sticky suckers from some of the plants. Then we had to pull-up all the pokeweed plants that came up in our blackberry patch. Then we cut some white, see-through stuff from a giant roll—with real scissors, and stitched two big bags on a sewing machine. We even put name tags on them. After that, we walked the tobacco again, looking for bugs and stuff, then tied a white see-through bag onto the tippy top of one of the plants. That's where it makes flowers. We had to go back inside to get a basket, and then we...um...picked some okra...oh!...and a lot of tomatoes.
It sounds like you had a busy day.
Right before lunch, we cut 135 pills in half with a little pill cutter—one at a time. After lunch, we looked for crummy cucumbers on the vines, and threw them away. Then we hiked out to the mailbox, but there was just a bunch of advertisement stuff. We updated our tobacco grow spreadsheet, and then made a big pot of chicken gumbo, so the okra wouldn't be icky to eat. But cutting up the okra was icky anyway. And we diced celery into tiny pieces, and put a bunch of baby yellow tomatoes into the pot whole.
Wow! That was a busy day!
Later, we read about the chaos in Haiti, and the flooding in St. Louis, where Uncle Ronnie lives. And all by myself, I edited a picture of a big tobacco leaf for my book. Oh, and Mommy, the teacher said I'm supposed to be "retired"—but I don't know that word yet. Is that like tired?
Yes. Do you have any homework?
I'm supposed to write a few more pages in the book...
First, we had to walk the tobacco, and tear off some sticky suckers from some of the plants. Then we had to pull-up all the pokeweed plants that came up in our blackberry patch. Then we cut some white, see-through stuff from a giant roll—with real scissors, and stitched two big bags on a sewing machine. We even put name tags on them. After that, we walked the tobacco again, looking for bugs and stuff, then tied a white see-through bag onto the tippy top of one of the plants. That's where it makes flowers. We had to go back inside to get a basket, and then we...um...picked some okra...oh!...and a lot of tomatoes.
It sounds like you had a busy day.
Right before lunch, we cut 135 pills in half with a little pill cutter—one at a time. After lunch, we looked for crummy cucumbers on the vines, and threw them away. Then we hiked out to the mailbox, but there was just a bunch of advertisement stuff. We updated our tobacco grow spreadsheet, and then made a big pot of chicken gumbo, so the okra wouldn't be icky to eat. But cutting up the okra was icky anyway. And we diced celery into tiny pieces, and put a bunch of baby yellow tomatoes into the pot whole.
Wow! That was a busy day!
Later, we read about the chaos in Haiti, and the flooding in St. Louis, where Uncle Ronnie lives. And all by myself, I edited a picture of a big tobacco leaf for my book. Oh, and Mommy, the teacher said I'm supposed to be "retired"—but I don't know that word yet. Is that like tired?
Yes. Do you have any homework?
I'm supposed to write a few more pages in the book...
Last edited:
HillDweller
Well-Known Member
You're writing a new book? I really enjoyed your Grow Your Own Cigars book. I'm mainly a pipe guy, but plenty of information for that too. I honestly think it is one of the best DIY books I've come across. Very glad I bought it.
I appreciate the kind words.
After a brief but heavy rain shower in the early evening, I was sitting out on my front porch, working on ********** on my laptop. I heard a loud, crunching crack. I looked up at the 150+ year old Silver Maple to see a large, thick branch, half-way up the tree, slowly fall toward the roof of my car. It really was slow motion is real life. It could have smashed my Mitsubishi sun roof to mush. But it struck a springy, much younger branch, which flipped the falling branch into a spin, deflecting it away from my car. The branch struck the ground end-on, and Z-folded into several large chunks, all of which landed 10 feet from my car. The only victim was a now-homeless, fat, iridescent green, Polyphemus moth caterpillar.
That branch will have to wait in line for cleanup.
Bob
Yep. It's classified at the moment.
After a brief but heavy rain shower in the early evening, I was sitting out on my front porch, working on ********** on my laptop. I heard a loud, crunching crack. I looked up at the 150+ year old Silver Maple to see a large, thick branch, half-way up the tree, slowly fall toward the roof of my car. It really was slow motion is real life. It could have smashed my Mitsubishi sun roof to mush. But it struck a springy, much younger branch, which flipped the falling branch into a spin, deflecting it away from my car. The branch struck the ground end-on, and Z-folded into several large chunks, all of which landed 10 feet from my car. The only victim was a now-homeless, fat, iridescent green, Polyphemus moth caterpillar.
That branch will have to wait in line for cleanup.
Bob
Snowblithe
Moderator
Luckily if the little guy runs amok you have the classical way to deal with such a creature right there; Just add fire to end of that log and jab away.
Didn't see an eye!
