Damn, dude. Good for you! I grew up in Eastern North Carolina where flue cured tobacco is (was) King. I've spent many a day "priming" tobacco and can back you up when you talk about it being labor intensive. Mechanical pickers and bulk barns came along and took a little of the grunt work out of it. The folks up in the mountains used to grow some burley, but I'd never seen the curing process until now. Love me some burley in a pipe.
Holy cow sir, I've been watching tobacco videos for the last 2 days and your plants are without a doubt the biggest. Whatever you're doing, you need to write a book on it. I'm starting to get into tobacco growing due to historical research, and I will be following your channel for this topic. By the way I live in West Virginia and spend time in Florida (will be growing in both places). So I take heart that if yours do that well in PA, mine should do fine in WV!
Thanks for the comment! I practice permaculture no till beds built on contour, everything is organic. I fertilize with fish emulsion foliar sprays for the first few months and I plant in may, i ammend beds each yaar with organic straw and mushroom compost, and mix in home made compost with each plant i transplant them when there aee at least 2 sets of leaves, by mid July I stop fertilizing.. I cut the suckers and top the plants religiously... and believe it or not, I NEVER water after the first planting... I use straw mulch and have raised beds on contour, so I never miss a rain drop... I apply that for my entire garden and get those absolute monster plants.
@myco_miguel Very cool, that's great information. May I ask what you mean by "on contour"? I'm sure I can Google it but in your own words? You mentioned "suckers", I got into this because was doing some research for an article I wrote for a historical society publication and found court cases in Virginia from the 1730s in which various persons including Lees were being arrested for "tending seconds" or "suckers". I wondered what in the world are seconds or suckers?? And down the rabbit hole I went. Apparently the Colonial assembly made it highly illegal to grow from seconds, which many planters were doing, because it ruined the quality of exports to England and drove down prices.
building on contour is building level beds with the slope of the land, think terracing.. every rain drop is caught and absorbed into a bed instead of going down hill. it is achieved by marking the lines with an A frame structure with a bubble level on the horizontal part.. my beds curve with the earth and never miss a drop of rain water. @@historyandhorseplaying7374
@historyandhorseplaying7374 I fear it would which is why I stop in July before the beginning August harvest, also too I don't want to load more nitrogen in the plants while they're beginnings to color cure
Thank you so much for taking the time to patiently explain everything. Your burley plants look beautiful beyond belief What I really want to know is how delicious does that lovely Burley smell while it’s hanging in the TabaccoShack curing for 6 months? Im betting it’s a fucking heavenly aroma.
I use a long strong big eyed needle that I made myself from a piece of a stainless steel tig welding rod, with the help of a hammer and a dremel tool, but one can also buy them somewhere afaik, and then I hang all the leaves, one after the other on a robust thread. Because if I would hang them in clusters here in my climate zone in Germany, the leafs would just start to mold where the rubber band is located. Oh, and the right ventilation is also very important to avoid mold issues. Good luck man✌️
Very true, I am due for an updated video because I do this very thing you speak of now. I hang them on a line after I thread poly thread through them... they're all individually spaced out and it makes way less mold
Freakn A bud I had some 7.5" ers Unfortunately I lost my first few curing attempts this yr my shed is too closed off and it's been humid lately I also got mold doing the rubber band thing so I have 2 5 tier wire racks now it works for my shed system, i stack the leaves as they move down the rack becoming drier and they ferment into golden papery treats 😂😂✌️✌️ I as well am harvesting as the leafs yellow. I see you harvested when they are still green I'm assuming you harvested when the bottom leaves started to yellow???? Yes mold is an issue !! And on weed at this time of year that's why I bring my plants in at night in the air conditioning as the buds fatten up, I've lost great lookn plants to mold n rot. Great to hear how long to wait to try my tobacc smoke !!!! Really enjoyed this video sir, this is one of my new hobbies !!
Your stalks are so thick. There must be some nutrient my ground here in central Kansas is missing. A lot of my tobacco varieties this year (my first time growing tobacco) have pitiful stalks that start out bent over before they straighten up. Some of the varieties looked a little better, but I had a terrible time trying to grow Burley 21 and Burley TN90. Neither variety has done well, even from seed and sprout. The Black Sea Samsun grew pretty easily, but nearly all have skinny stalks. The plants that have done the best were some live plants I purchased through the mail. Next year, I plan to start earlier and amend my soil a lot more. All I tried this year was to add sand to my clay-rich soil, and then I added a lot of organic material from the city compost heap. Anyway, your plants look amazing! If you have any recommendations for how to amend my soil to make it more like something from PA, please let me know.
Thanks for passing on your experience. I grow Virginia baccy in New Zealand, but struggle to ferment the colour cured leaves. I’ve watched the commercial guys and they stove the relatively green leaves in sheds with temperature and humidity controls. Does anybody get a good result using simple methods? Or should I grow Burley? I’m getting the Burley is easier to process vibe. PS my Virginia tastes acrid even after a year. No mould or green leaf issues to account for it, but possibly drying too quickly.
i have definitely smoked them but apparently they're less potent, because the plant is focusing its energy on the flower and seed production.. that's why topping your plants at least 4 weeks before picking is ideal, the leaves will become thick and robust.
Very cool this is why I see people harvesting whole plants with most of the leaves still green I was wondering about this as other guys say wait till the leaves yellow, apparently they are sweeter when they are yellow !??!??
@@zandig666 They definitely have a better taste if you can wait for them to properly yellow. However, as the guy said in the video, there can be issues with mold if you leave them to yellow on the plant for too long. Harvesting the whole stalk is less work and the leaves will still brown while they're hanging, there's also less concern for mold once you hang the stalks in the warm barn. Think bananas for example. They're usually picked green in some distant country, then they ripen during the shipment. This produces an edible crop but as far as I know, they taste much sweeter when you leave them on the tree for long enough and they ripen naturally. It's kind of the same, sometimes it's just more convinient/necessary to pick tobacco leaves while they're still green and ripen them in a barn.
Honestly since I've switched to a herb vaporizer I can actually sense how horrible smoking feels. Never again. Just want to share that there is a better way. But then again does the Lord even approve of this habit.
