The Tobacco Plant Project

[mrtr33]

So, I'm totally getting shown up here. Smoked! - you're the man.

Attached is my pitiful attempt. I'm kind of embarrassed. In my defense, I have yet to use any fertilizer. And we have a newborn at the house, who takes up a good bit of time. But seeing that this is the only garden we'll have in the backyard (no veggies this year), it will be my primary focus.

Mostly Black Mammoth.



My potting mix of choice.



Instead of the more precise, razor-blade cut to separate twins, I'm lazy. With all my transplants, I took the netting off - I remembered from last year that this encouraged root growth a bit better if it wasn't contained. I feel like this netting, over time, would disintegrate anyway, but I wanted to give the plants as much of a chance as possible.




Finished product. We ended up with one Argentina, one Long Red Leaf, one (small, probably diseased) and 13 Black Mammoths. Not sure what happened. I was really hoping for more Long Red Leafs, and especially more (and healthier) Florida Sumatras. Hopefully, it will come along in the next few weeks.



Long Red Leaf, Florida Sumatra, Argentina



So, as I mentioned before, this will probably be my only garden this year. I'd like it if I had 8 salvageable plants in two weeks - large enough to plant. I'm still holding off on fertilizer, rather holding out until I get them into the ground.

[Smoked!]

Nice, Mark. Looking good so far. The little sprouts will take off once they get more soil and space, as well as a dose of fertilizer. I have more pics, but no opportunity to post just yet.

Congrats again on the new arrival!

[mrtr33]

It's been 2 weeks, so I thought I'd provide an update.

So far, things are going good. If I had to do it over again, I think I would have exposed the plants to the elements a bit sooner than I did. I didn't get them outside until I repotted them - this was a mistake. I also learned a few things as well.

For one thing, I immediately encountered an aphid problem. This was solved (as far as I can tell) by spraying the plants with generous portions of tobacco water. I broke up a cheapie cigar, boiled it in water like loose-leaf tea, and after it cooled, filtered the tobacco out for the brownish, pungent water. I also had a problem with slugs. Unfamiliar with these pests, I just picked the tray of pots I had them on up off of the ground at night - prime time for slug feedings. Remnants of these pests can be seen on the images below.

My tobacco garden:



Argentina (one plant - two pictures):
Notice the pointy tip of the leaf - so far, that's the best way I've been able to tell it apart from the others.





Black Mammoth (two plants - one picture):
These have rounder tips on the ends of their leaves.



Florida Sumatra:
Okay, don't laugh. The fact that I got ANYTHING from this batch of seeds was amazing. And it has grown substantially since I potted it, despite it's neighbors dwarfing it. I will probably keep this in the pot for a while before transplanting it to the ground. But so far - so good.



Long Red Leaf (one plant - two pictures):
You can see how much smaller the Florida Sumatra is in comparison (it's on the left). The ends of their leaves are somewhere in the middle between the roundness of Black Mammoth and the points of the Argentina.





Trouble plants: I'm not sure what to make of these. Here's what I think happened. A few days after I re-potted these plants, I kept them in the sun - it wasn't too hot (maybe low-80's), and I thought it would be okay. My guess is that the plastic got too hot, and scorched the still-virgin leaves that touched the edges of the plastic pots. They continue growing okay, but look worse and worse. Hopefully, the rest of the plant will outgrow these and I can trim them off. We'll see. There are a couple other plants that have a similar look to them, but these were the most prevalent.

Black Mammoth:





Smoked has a MUCH better tobacco garden than I do, however. Care to provide insight on identifying characteristics of the plants?

Thanks for reading............

[Smoked!]

Cues to plant I.D? … Now, that’s a question for a tomacco professional. Let me look more closely at each variety and I’ll try to come up with a few identifiers. They only way I can keep track currently is by segregating the varieties when they’re in the early stages and by marking the containers when they’re ready for step-up. When they go in the ground, I’ll simply note what is in each row. I may need to hang a scarecrow to keep birds and wildlife away. I’m thinking something like this:




Seems to be working great in the Gulf. …or maybe a poster of mailman’s former sig tag.


A few notes so far:
1. I like the aluminum tray with a translucent ‘sticky wrap’ cover for seed germination beds. I’ll do that again, but I may opt for the larger size to accommodate an intermediate step-up.
2. Step-up to peat pots more quickly, or sow directly into them next year.
3. Step-up to larger containers. The 5 inch peat pots were ok, but the really small ones were a waste of time. For a second step, if necessary, I believe the additional space in the one gallon pots will allow for better root development and help form stronger, straighter stalks. These plants spread out quickly and need lots of space.
4. Set out in direct sun earlier for hardening off.
5. Apply fertilizer carefully in the early stages, but feed them regularly once they are established. They are heavy feeders and suck up every available nutrient.
6. Plan ground space early. It appears that these guys are going to need much more room to spread out and fully develop than I anticipated. At this point, there is too little space in the plant bed to accommodate them all. I may have to chop up part of the yard.

Attached are some of the latest photos. For some reason, I can’t locate all the images. It is likely I filed them incorrectly when I downloaded them from the camera. It’s no great loss. Check out the tomacco pr0n:

Remember the ‘wishful thinking’ photo of the lone BM that I put in a one gallon container on a whim? How do you like her now? If we do this again, I think using large containers for step-up and hardening off may be the plan for next year. I think they may be easier to move around and will have a better chance to develop strong roots. Note the leaf damage on the edge of the plastic container. It looks just like mrtr33’s.

May 08:



May 18:





Below is a smaller BM that I pulled out of the tray. It is in one of the small peat pots and desperately needs more space. Notice the yellowing leaves to the right and the small brown leaves on the top left. These need to be removed along with any other inferior leaves to promote better stalk and leaf formation. You can see that the spread on this little guy is already more than one foot. Are we stepping into the Little Shop of Tomaccos?




Here is a shot of the FS tray. Note the plants on the bottom left. Those are the TWE Smack Down contestants. The ones behind the ruler on the left are the split plants. They seem to be doing just fine. In the foreground, you can see the plant on the bottom right has leaf damage from the edge of the pot similar to the effect mrtr33 pointed out. The leaves seem to damage easily regardless of the material they contact. Note to self: Fill pots to rim to prevent leaf contact.

[mrtr33]

Really cool photos, Smoked!

I agree, I think next year I'll probably still start the seeds in peat pods (for space issues), but I'll transfer them much much sooner than I did this year (and probably won't have a baby keeping me from doing so next year - well, we'd better not ). I also totally agree on filling the pots up to the top, but I guess my only reservation is the depth of those pots. I guess I'm worrying that the potting soil at the bottom of that gallon pot not being utilized. I might get shorter, wider pots for that purpose.

I will agree that these plants grow incredibly quickly. I haven't added any fertilizer to my plants (besides what may be in the potting soil when I repotted), but that's about to change, as I prepare my beds for transplanting the plants into the ground. Since I posted the pictures above, I would guess each plant has almost doubled in size, simply because they have more soil and space to grow. I also remember reading somewhere that tobacco drains the nutrients of their soil very rapidly - because of this, the beds I'm building will only contain the soil I want them to grow in, and not any part of the soil from the ground. I'll try to get pictures of the beds together soon. Probably won't get any more photos of the plants for a little bit.

[mrtr33]

What a difference a week makes. No fertilizer still. I'd imagine this growth will slow the larger the plants get, and outgrow their tiny little pots.

Argentina - May 14:



Argentina - May 21:




Florida Sumatra / Long Red Leaf - May 14:



Florida Sumatra / Long Red Leaf - May 21:




The whole tobacco garden. It's amazed me how quickly these have grown. The weather has been very cooperative, with rain only 2 of the last 10 days or so. Even still, most days get at least a little bit of sun. Some of these plants are probably ready to be transferred, but there are some that are probably still a little small to be transferred; namely, the Florida Sumatra plant. My other concern right now is that the leaves are really starting to spread out, so the larger plants are shielding the light from the smaller plants. I really like the tray I have them in now, and would rather not upgrade to larger pots before transferring them into the ground.






The planter beds - only about half full. I'm emptied my compost bin from last year as the base of these beds. Also found about a gazillion worms. I'm filling the rest up with compost. I forget the name brand now, but it's something from a garden shop, and not one of the big box stores. It's at this time that I'll add fertilizer for the first time as well. Basically, I just put 2 - 2X4's on top of each other. Originally, I was worried that there would be too much space between the boards, for the compost to leak out of. As it turns out, this is not the case. At this point, I probably won't finish these beds until Sunday at the earliest. I'm going to be checking the weather to try to decide on the best time to transfer my plants to the ground. I'd rather not risk subjecting the new transfers to a torrential Louisiana rainstorm.
I subscribe to the Square Foot Gardening principle. So I built these 4X4 beds, and will section them each off into 4 - 1 square foot sections, one for each plant. The hope is that with using such rich compost, and with so much space, the plants should thrive. I've also chosen to use a time-release fertilizer, so I won't have to worry about that so much. The soil here in our neighborhood is very high in clay content, and not great for gardens. Hopefully, this gets around that.






Observation: the below plant is the Long Red Leaf. As you can see, the three larger leaves toward the top look strong. The bottom two, however, are yellowing and/or otherwise fading. I should probably pick these off, to support growth of the other leaves. I noticed this last year with my plants as well. the bottom leaves seemed to just yellow and die. I just picked them off.

[Smoked!]

Those things took off! Nice photos.

I was thinking about the square foot concept. Crop intensive farming is common in regions with limited resources. Many of the seed varieties, or traits, are specifically designed for particular conditions. In this case, I think the type of plant we are growing needs a bit more room. The leaves may grow 24 - 30 inches long. Guestimating angle and leaf curvature, that puts the approximate spread for the stalk at better than three feet. I'm not no math wiz, but I think one square foot may be a little tight... More important, this is a leaf crop, as opposed to root or seed crops that seem to be better suited to intensive methods. Just my .02.

In any case, you're miles ahead of me in prepping the ground. I'm thinking of just plowing up the neighbors yard.