Grow your own tobacco

[Nicobuzz]

Has anybody ever tried growing their own? It doesn't sound too difficult - you just have to wait a year until it dries and matures lol.

I'm thinking about it.

[chainsnuser]

It's really not difficult to grow the plants.

I described most of my experiences in this thread: http://www.snuson.com/viewtopic.php?t=1411

After that my plants grew quite well and managed to blossom (unfortunately I didn't take any really good pictures, but the plants need nothing more than good soil - flower-soil may be better than mediocre garden-soil and potting the pants may be better than just planting them in the garden) and a little bit of bug-prevention. Especially snails seem to be either nicotine-lovers or nicotine-resistant, they simply love to eat tobacco plants.

I planted tobacco last year for the first time mainly to do my own trial-and-error and the small harvest that I got last year went moldy (it was an error for sure to dry the leaves in the cellar).

Nonetheless, it's quite easy to grow tobacco. The plants need around 60-120 days to grow and these must be absolute frost-free-days, so it's not a bad idea in colder climates to pre-grow the plants indoors.

The biggest problem certainly isn't to grow the plants and to dry the leaves, but to freebase the nicotine (what the fire does when smoking), so something like soda (like in snus) or lime (like in Makla) or several types of acid (like in many brands of traditional 'chewing tobacco', including dip I assume) has to be added. It's useless to chew fresh, unprocessed leaves (no matter if they're really fresh or already dried). They taste like lettuce and they're certainly not unhealthy, but you won't feel any nicotine.

I'll grow tobacco this year again. I'm not much of a gardening-freak, but tobacco really is fun to grow. The plants really are beautiful. Maybe I'll also get some useable outcome (nicotine-wise) this time - and yeah, who knows which new taxes and bans may come - the knowledge to grow and process tobacco may get really useful sooner or later.

Cheers!

[frogbmth]

I'm thinking exactly the same thing, though for vaporizing. I read one guide saying you can go from sowing to cured in 6 months? I would like to try vaping it uncured too.

Seeds are so cheap I am gonna have a try, my veggie patch is empty and needs putting to use 8)

[Maxpower05080]

I was going to plant tobacco this year actually in my garden, but decided against it because as cool as it is to say you grow tobacco, it would be pointless. Preparing a curing the tobacco leaves after it grown takes years, and is a tedious process that I just don't feel like doing.

If I can find some seeds in a nursery near me, I'll pick them up and maybe give it a shot. Its easy, and I heard the tobacco leaves are beautiful.

[frogbmth]

This says 4 weeks is enough?

http://www.coffinails.com/curing_tobacco.html

[Maxpower05080]

I'm pretty sure you need to compress it after the curing, that takes a couple years.

[Nicobuzz]

I'm pretty sure you need to compress it after the curing, that takes a couple years.

Aaaawww - bugger that then PMSL :lol:

[Maxpower05080]

I'm pretty sure you need to compress it after the curing, that takes a couple years.

Aaaawww - bugger that then PMSL :lol:

Is it just me, or am I the only one who never gets british humor? :wink: