Gabeb123's 2021 grow

[Gabeb123]

I received my seed order from NWT seeds the other day so I thought I would start my 2021 grow blog. I am not planning on starting my seeds untill March 2nd so this is a little premature but I'm excited.

I am planning on growing:
5x Vuelta Abajo
5x Lancaster Seedleaf
5x Little Dutch
5x Corojo 99
3x Florida Sumatra
2x Small Stalk Black Mammoth

Everything except the Black Mammoth is hopefully for cigars. My favorite nasal snuff is Fribourg & Treyer high dry T so I'm going to try to experiment with the Black Mammoth to see if I can make something close to that.

Happy growing!

 

[Knucklehead]

Nice selections. Good luck with your season!

 

[deluxestogie]

Some seedlings fail to thrive. Some transplants fail in the garden. I would suggest you prepare at least 25% extra transplants of each variety, so that you can easily replace any loss in a timely manner. Once those in the garden are going well, then you ruthlessly destroy the unneeded extras, or maybe put a few into pots.

Bob

 

[Oldfella]

I received my seed order from NWT seeds the other day so I thought I would start my 2021 grow blog. I am not planning on starting my seeds untill March 2nd so this is a little premature but I'm excited.

I am planning on growing:
5x Vuelta Abajo
5x Lancaster Seedleaf
5x Little Dutch
5x Corojo 99
3x Florida Sumatra
2x Small Stalk Black Mammoth

Everything except the Black Mammoth is hopefully for cigars. My favorite nasal snuff is Fribourg & Treyer high dry T so I'm going to try to experiment with the Black Mammoth to see if I can make something close to that.

Happy growing!

Good luck with your grow.
Cheers Oldfella

 

[Gabeb123]

Some seedlings fail to thrive. Some transplants fail in the garden. I would suggest you prepare at least 25% extra transplants of each variety, so that you can easily replace any loss in a timely manner. Once those in the garden are going well, then you ruthlessly destroy the unneeded extras, or maybe put a few into pots.

Bob

Thanks for the tip! I was thinking about starting double because I could always put them in my front yard. It doesn't get as much sun but I'm in the process of cutting down a giant cottonwood and that should open things up a bit.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Gabeb123]

Here are some pictures of the "color curing chamber" I built. I'm pretty sure most of the tobacco I grew last year ended up drying too fast. So after two failed harvest's I decided I need somewhere I can control the humidity.

Its roughly 4'x4'x6.5' I framed it up with 2x4's and wrapped it with the thickest poly I could find. I sealed it up really good with that foil hvac tape. The exhaust fan is just a cheap 4" inline fan I bought off Amazon. Right now I have a ultrasonic humidifier in there. The fan I was going to use for circulation ended up being broken so I'll have to get a new one.

The temp stays 68-72 depending on how cold it is outside and I ran it with nothing in it for a few days and was able to keep it at 65% humidity easily.

Some things I still want to do are adding hooks to the walls to string the plants on and framing up a spot to slide a furnace filter over the air intake. I also need to seal up the door and probably add a latch.

 

[Rednekf350]

Some seedlings fail to thrive. Some transplants fail in the garden. I would suggest you prepare at least 25% extra transplants of each variety, so that you can easily replace any loss in a timely manner. Once those in the garden are going well, then you ruthlessly destroy the unneeded extras, or maybe put a few into pots.

Bob

Great advice. Last year was my first year growing and after struggling a little to get a good crop of transplantable seedlings, I wasn't about to let anything go to waste. I had to replace plants already in the garden that just failed to thrive a few times. All of my extra plants became conversation starters planted all around the trees in our front yard. "Is that tobacco ??" is all I heard this past summer.

 

[Gabeb123]

I 3d printed some labels. They are probably a little too small because some of the text didn't turn out very good. I'll have to reprint the black mammoth labels. I might just reprint them all scaled up a little bit.

 

[deluxestogie]

They look great, and they are readable. I would just tuck away the thought of scaling them up for 2022.

Bob

 

[Gabeb123]

They look great, and they are readable. I would just tuck away the thought of scaling them up for 2022.

Bob

I think I'll take your advice. If these turn out I probably won't need to grow these varieties again for many years. I don't consume that much tobacco.

Next year I am thinking I will try to grow a virginia, a burley, and a oriental variety. It would be fun to try as many different curing methods as I can.

I'm especially interested in sun curing. My favorite nasal snuffs are the Indian white snuffs like Dholakia white and white elephant and I'm guessing they use sun cured tobacco. I might even try sun curing one of my black mammoth plants as an experiment.

 

[deluxestogie]

I know with certainty that burley that is sun-cured is irremediably awful. I don't know about dark air-cured varieties that are sun cured.

Bob

 

[Oldfella]

I know with certainty that burley that is sun-cured is irremediably awful. I don't know about dark air-cured varieties that are sun cured.

Bob

I have in past years grows sun cured all my Virginia gold. It came out great, In fact it enticed my neighbor into growing his own. It was flavored with Rum and honey or molasses. Bit more suffocated now with kilns different varieties, ageing and stuff.
Cheers Oldfella

 

[deluxestogie]

Yes. Flue-cure varieties and most Oriental varieties seem to sun-cure well. Interestingly, they both also flue-cure well.

Bob

 

[Oldfella]

I'm going to try flue curing them this year, keep an eye on my blog.
Oldfella

 

[Gabeb123]

I scaled up the next batch of plant labels a little and changed the font. They turned out better but still not perfect. I'm happy with them though. I even got the dot on the "i" in basil to stick to the "L".


For sun curing I'm thinking I will pick the most pungent smelling oriental I can find and pull off in my short growing season. That may change if I can find more info about the tobacco they use to manufacture the Indian white snuffs but so far it seems like the manufacturers are pretty secretive.

 

[Gabeb123]

My seedlings are coming along nicely. I wish I started them in larger cells. The store only had these weird hex shaped cells and I was being lazy and didn't want to make any more stops.

I think I can start acclimating them to the greenhouse on Saturday so I'm thinking I can transplant them to 4" pots once they are all acclimated.

This is my first year attempting to clip my seedlings.

 

[deluxestogie]

I believe that @BigBonner uses 72-cell float trays in his production. They are clipped as needed, never transplanted to bigger cells or pots, then sent from the greenhouse directly to the field for transplant.

Bob

 

[Knucklehead]

I use either 48 or 72 cell 1020 trays depending on how many I want to plant and to make best use of my seed start set up. I seed in the cells, thin out from there, then keep them in those cells until planting. I separate the cells of either 4 or 6 packs and move those to a separate table where I seed those cells to keep the varieties separate. I don’t do any transplanting between seeding and moving the seedlings to the patch. Here’s some plants right before transplant.

2015 Knucklehead Grow Blog

I seed direct to soil in the cells. Then weed out and move around seedlings until I end up with one healthy seedling per cell. The seedlings will remain in the cells until transplant to the patch, given a haircut as they begin to crowd each other. Same way i do it

fairtradetobacco.com

 

[Gabeb123]

Thanks for the advice. I'll just leave them in those cells that sounds easier.

 

[Knucklehead]

Thanks for the advice. I'll just leave them in those cells that sounds easier.

In one of the threads here, someone (I want to say Deluxestogie but don’t hold me to it) did a comparison between keeping the seedlings in 1020 cells and transplanting to larger pots. Seeds were all started at the same time during the same season for comparison purposes. The seedlings transplanted to larger pots early were noticeably larger at transplant time, but by the end of the season, all plants were virtually indistinguishable. I keep mine in the cells to keep a smaller footprint in my starting area, and to help prevent Knucklehead error. Aside from giving them light, food, water, and haircuts, I stay out of the way until handing off to Mother Nature in the patch. After that I’m just a pest control guy.