My next project - Growing Tobacco

[Slash McCoy]

I have read the tricky part is the drying and curing/fermenting.

You read correctly, pretty much. DIYers have certain shortcuts that they can use, though. The curing (drying, sort of) part is the same. Tie a bunch of leaves together and hang them where they will get air circulation around and through them of reasonable temp and humidity, for a month or two. The aging or fermenting commercially is done by making big stacks of tobacco with a certain "case" or moisture content, and the temperature is monitored. At a certain point the stack is broken up and re-stacked. Repeating that a couple of times, I understand. DIYers often build a kiln that duplicates this process in only a few weeks, though discriminating growers will still age for a year to three years after kilning. Of course properly fermented leaf can be rolled with little or no aging and then the cigars are aged after rolling. It's like some guys face lather and some guys bowl lather, I think. Honestly I am just getting started in this. I will be ageing my leaf for a year I think, and I am going to age at least most of my cigars for three years.

I think the trickiest part was learning to germinate the seeds. They are somewhat finnicky and the sprouts are very delicate. They NEED sun since their nutrients are provided almost entirely by photosynthesis right from the get go. The seeds are very tiny, too. I learned that you do not bury them. They lie on the surface. They must never dry out. They need a fairly narrow range of temperature. You can't sprinkle water on them... you have to water from the bottom. It took four attempts to get good at germination. The seed is never sown on the ground. Seeds are always started, and then the seedlings are transplanted into the ground when they are tough enough to handle it.

In a few days I will do another priming, if there are enough ripe leaves. This will be all Seco. In a couple of weeks I will be able to harvest the next grade, Viso, leaving only the Ligero and Corona to ripen. The naked stalks will support a quick crop of fall beans which will return the favor by returning nitrogen to the soil. By then the corn will be ready and the fall okra will be starting to produce, and it will be time to plant winter onions, probably 10-15s. Maybe some carrots, cabbage, I don't know what all else. January will see me setting tobacco, tomato, and jalapeno seeds so I have seedlings ready to plant out by middle of March. We have a long growing season here, starts fairly early. OMG what have I gotten myself into?

 

[Slash McCoy]

So i have a question. Is it the variety of tobacco that makes it that height? The only time i was in a tobacco field was when I was in Cuba. The stalks were almost 6 ft tall.

The particular variety definitely influences height, as do environmental factors. Some types tend to grow low and bushy. Connecticut Shade grown under shade cloth can go over 9 feet. 5 to 7 feet is pretty normal for most cigar leaf varieties, most of which are of Cuban origin. The Connecticut Shade and Connecticut Broadleaf are descended from Cuban varieties, and Cuban origin varieties are widely grown around the world but particularly in the Americas and the Caribbean, for use in cigars. Cigarette tobacco is mostly Virginia and Burley, with sometimes some Balkan or Middle Eastern varieties thrown in, the so-called "Oriental" tobaccos. Most cigar tobaccos grow a bit shorter but wider. So yeah the variety influences height but does not determine height by itself. The soil, water and rainfall frequency and duration, cloud cover and percentage of time when the sun shines brightly, fertilizing, insect and disease, competition with weeds, stalk support in some cases, all influence the height. The goal of course is not so much about height as leaf number, thickness, length, width, and fineness of the veins.

 

[Kentos]

I guess you are a landlubber now ?

 

[Columbo]

The particular variety definitely influences height, as do environmental factors. Some types tend to grow low and bushy. Connecticut Shade grown under shade cloth can go over 9 feet. 5 to 7 feet is pretty normal for most cigar leaf varieties, most of which are of Cuban origin. The Connecticut Shade and Connecticut Broadleaf are descended from Cuban varieties, and Cuban origin varieties are widely grown around the world but particularly in the Americas and the Caribbean, for use in cigars. Cigarette tobacco is mostly Virginia and Burley, with sometimes some Balkan or Middle Eastern varieties thrown in, the so-called "Oriental" tobaccos. Most cigar tobaccos grow a bit shorter but wider. So yeah the variety influences height but does not determine height by itself. The soil, water and rainfall frequency and duration, cloud cover and percentage of time when the sun shines brightly, fertilizing, insect and disease, competition with weeds, stalk support in some cases, all influence the height. The goal of course is not so much about height as leaf number, thickness, length, width, and fineness of the veins.

Last week we returned from a trip to the Carolinas. Gorgeous tobacco country deep along the backroads there. You have a slice of that beauty in your backyard.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I guess you are a landlubber now ?

Not exactly. I am still the Bosun, just retired! And I still got my sailboat, too. But I am making the best of it. If I owned a lot of property that was mostly water I would probably be raising oysters or crawfish or alligators. I don't so I raise veggies and bakky. We might get some chickens next year.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Harvested some more today. So two harvests are hanging up to cure. When the leaves start turning yellow they are ripe and ready to pick.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Wow third harvest this morning. I won't bore you all with another pic. At this rate before the middle of Sept I will be down to bare stalks. The corn will be high and I can plant beans among all the stalks and get some green beans in before first chance of frost which is I think middle of November here.

We had a lot of severe weather in June and it knocked a lot of my bakky down. Then instead of standing back up, the stems bent upward from the end, with new growth. So I ended up with plants that had a three foot segment laying right on the ground. I might try a bushier cultivar next year, maybe a burley derived variety. The CT Shade was particularly fragile in that regard but the closely related CT Broadleaf, not so much. The Habano 2000 isn't showing me much growth but it is still early for that planting. I had high hopes for that cultivar as it is known for yielding plenty of binder and wrapper grade leaves along with filler, from the same plot and even the same plant. I have some Ecuadorian grown Habano 2000 Viso filler leaf and I get a lot of binder and wrapper leaf out of each bundle, and of rather nice size. The Criollo 98, a well known and excellent filler variety, did okay but it was in the sunniest part of the garden. I might get a few wrappers out of it.

From this crop I will not be rolling any really big cigars, unless I double up the binders and buy some CT Shade wrappers. That stuff is expensive, around $55 to $75 a pound, and I guess about 90 leaves average to the pound. A leaf of course makes two half leaves. The central vein is discarded so you are working with half leaves only. Most filler runs around $20/lb and that makes up the bulk of a cigar, so I am still saving some serious coin growing bakky even if it is just filler grade. It will be nice to get at least a few wrappers so I can say that the rolled cigars are puros all rolled from tobacco grown at Finca McCoy. That is roughly equivalent to gathering bog iron, making steel from scratch, then forging a razor from it. All in one pair of hands, from seed to smoke.