It starts! 2013 tobacco growing season!

[squeezyjohn]

OK - so I figured that given one of my major problems was that I had to harvest late in the season and cure the leaves in the autumn last year ... I also didn't give tobacco enough credit as a fairly robust plant and molly coddled it a bit too much in the early stages - so I'm going to start earlier and pray for a nice hot sunny May here in the UK.

Today is the day to sow the seeds. I've got Yellow Twist Bud, Black Stalk Mammoth, Alida, Dark Virginia, and Del Gold to play with as well as lots of my own Rustica seeds collected from the plants last year which I will reserve for the twists. Lots more space devoted to these this year - and more plants.

It's grey and miserable here - but planting really is exciting! I'm going to try and take pics and maybe the odd video this year for you all.

Cheers

Squeezy

[lxskllr]

Good luck! I hope this years crop is exceptional.

[crullers]

I hope the weather cooperates for you better this time around! I was hoping to plant a few this year but didn't order any seeds and will have to wait until next year.

[Snusdog]

Squeezy

Sounds good....and I really hope you will share some pic with us...........I for one would love to see them

[Skell18]

Looking forward to this one mate.

[squeezyjohn]

Here's a short film of what I did today.

Cheers

Squeezy

[lxskllr]

Nice film Squeezy. Your spot on the planet looks nice :^)

[squeezyjohn]

Thanks lxskllr! Yeah - it's beautiful but it was raining quite a lot which kind of puts a dampener on things.

What you can't tell is there should be a big hill behind the fields - and on the other side of it is Oxford.

[squeezyjohn]

Well that technique for germinating the seeds was much more of a success than last year's just put them on the windowsill method!

Most varieties have poked their heads out of the seeds in 4 days flat - the winner is Yellow Twist Bud and the Alida seeds from the Swedish Match museum in Stockholm are falling behind and it's time to take the clingfilm off and give them some windowsill light.

[tattooer601]

Cool deal Squezzy!!
You have good variety for adjusting taste.....
Good way to go threw bad day.

[whalen]

Good luck with this years crop mate! Good start to the season. With that many sheep around, I can see the reason for your your total disinterest in fleshlights!

[squeezyjohn]

I know this is the shortest YouTube video known to man, but ...

Here comes the Yellow Twist Bud ... pop pop pop!

Isn't mother nature wonderful?

[squeezyjohn]

Only two weeks from sowing and I've got nearly 50 tubes full of seedlings like this:


The next proper job is to thin them out which involves destroying 90% of the seedlings - which seems a little harsh but is necessary to make one nice strong plant per toilet roll tube. I'm using scissors to snip the tops off so I don't disturb the soil around the roots of the ones I'm keeping. I'm still keeping 6 or so strong seedlings in each tube nicely spaced out so I can choose the strongest one to keep once the true leaves emerge in another few weeks.

When they've been thinned they look like this:


I've also started off seeds for Rustica in the past week using the same method as the video - only I'm doing them in bought root-trainers as I've run out of used cardboard tubes! They are still to germinate. It will be interesting to see if the seeds are viable as I saved them myself from last year. If they don't germinate I still have some of the seeds I planted last year which worked well.

Cheers

Squeezy

[CCC]

What a great thread! Now i find out that it is illegal to grow tobacco in Australia. (oh unless you get a permit from our taxation department and have a farm big enough to produce mass amounts of which they get a cut).

[squeezyjohn]

Oh I'm really sorry to hear that CCC. In almost every other English-speaking country it's legal to grow and cure whole leaves without any need for a permit or dealing with the excise guys. Normally only when it comes to processing the tobacco in to a smokeable or other taxable form does it become an issue to declare (because the sale of snus in the UK is banned under European legislation it doesn't have a tax code which is why I can get away with making it as there are no laws against home-production or possession here)

I didn't realise that Australia had such uniquely tough tobacco laws. I know of many people in New Zealand who grow their own tobacco.

As the species Nicotiana is also grown as ornamental plants world-wide I can't see how you could be convicted for growing it easily. I wouldn't want to suggest anyone breaks the law - but all varieties contain some level of nicotine in their leaves - it can't seriously be true that you can't grow Nicotiana in Oz? I mean - tomatoes contain quite a lot of nicotine!