The Tobacco Plant Project

[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.

[mrtr33]

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.

Yeah, I agree. But I also think that the plants will only grow up to the space their provided, and I can't justify taking up so much of my garden simply for the pleasure of monstrous tobacco plants. Maybe next year. I think I'm already doing better than I did last year. It's all a learning process.

[ashauler]

Fantastic photo's guys......I may have to post some of my own here as soon as I have the additional time to wait for the thread to open.

All of my plants have been transferred to 5" peat pots. They are straining their environment and need to be either moved to the ground or into large pots. I think I'll split them up at that point...some in pots for small decorative plants and others into the ground to reach their full potential. I may move a few this weekend. Nothing special as far as ground preparation for me, just straight into their appropriate spots in the flower beds.....most likely will fertilize with some good old Miracle-gro.

[mrtr33]

So, I finally got around to putting the larger plants in the ground. Photos are included.

As mentioned before, I have chosen to go with 2 - 4X4 boxes. This is probably not enough room for them to grow commercially, but for my experimental purposes, this should do fine. The larger plants were definitely outgrowing their smaller pots, and I found some free time over the holiday weekend to pull this off. The rest of the plants are still being kept as backups, in case one plant dies unexpectedly, a hard rain wipes one out, or we get another freeze.

I built the boxes a few weeks ago. I had an unsightly compost pile from last year in the corner of the backyard, and used the compost from that as the base (that's why you see eggshells, avocado peels, etc. in some of the pictures). I then bought several bags of organic, commercial compost from my local small nursery, to make it look kind of nice on top.

Clockwise, from top left: Black Mammoth, Long Red Leaf, Argentina, Black Mammoth



Clockwise, from top left: Black Mammoth, Florida Sumatra, Black Mammoth, Black Mammoth



The two best plants so far:

Long Red Leaf



Argentina



It will probably take at least a week of these plants settling into their new environment before I see any growth again. The summers are pretty brutal here, so even when growing directions on a plant says to give it "full sun", that actually translates here to "no more than 4 hours of direct sunlight". They are in a partly shaded area of our backyard. I haven't added any fertilizers, and am not sure if I will or not. They've been doing pretty well without any fertilizer, and the compost I planted them in is rather rich. We'll see. I can always add more later.

The other plants that weren't put in the ground will probably grow a little bit more, but unless they get transferred to a different pot, will probably max out their growth soon. One plant in particular was heavily infested with aphids up until Sunday evening. Last night it was looking better, and hopefully a few more spray treatments will knock those out for sure. By the way, the tobacco water didn't work as well as anticipated, but rather a soapy-water concoction seems to work better.