From Bud to Harvest

[EGeekBMe]

This is an awesome project and seeing what you have done, they look great. I hope it works out well for you as I can imagine smoking your own product would (hopefully) be a very rewarding experience.

[ashauler]

Visited the tobacco patch this morning.....without the goddamn crutches!!!! WoooHooo!! First time I've stood on my own two feet in 6 weeks. Damn, even the pain feels good.

Needed to water this morning so I set out the hose, rinsed the plants off and snapped some pics. I went ahead and removed the flower buds from all plants due to a nasty infestation of tobacco bud worms. These little bastards drill right into the buds themselves and hide...then come out to feed on the uppermost leaves of the plant. That is what the little holes in the top leaves are from. They don't seem to bother the mid or lower leaves, they let the grasshoppers have those.

It's too close to harvest to use anymore pesticide, except the insecticidal soap that is. I don't think they are doing enough damage to worry too much about anyway, especially since I'm not dead set on getting anything smokeable from this crop.

Here's the crop:

Florida Sumatra:


Argentina:


Long Red Leaf:

Example leaf of the LRL. You can see some of the indicators of ripening in this photo. The "alligator skin" texture is becoming more prominent along with some yellow mottling of the leaf. Not quite there yet, but soon.:

2nd planting of LRL:


Small Stalk Black Mammoth:

Example SSBM leaves, check out the size compared to that $1 bill:



2nd planting of SSBM:


I did not harvest any additional leaves today, and in fact I believe that I harvested the others just a tad early. This shouldn't have too much of an effect on the dried/cured leaf. I've learned it is better to be a little early with the harvest than late, so that is positive for the leaves I have drying already.

I'll start another thread to cover the drying/curing phase of this project. I'm coming to realize that this phase will be the most difficult of all, as well as the most risky.

Thanks for looking, and stay tuned.

[WOXOF]

Very cool Jamie.

[ashauler]

Hey Chris, where ya been brother? Nice to see ya posting again!!

[WOXOF]

Been way too busy with grad school. On the home-stretch now.

[ashauler]

Went to the tobacco patch over my lunch hour today to inspect the crop. We had a couple of days of rain earlier in the week, high winds, etc. Two of the Florida Sumatra plants and one Small Stalk Black Mammoth were blown down. Pop stood them back up for me and they appear to be none the worse for wear and should make it to harvest with no issues.

Speaking of harvest......Saturday will be a big day for me. All plants appear to be ready to harvest the bottom 1/3 of leaves. This will most likely be 5-6 leaves per plant for the Argentina / Long Red / Black Mammoth varieties and 3-4 of each Florida Sumatra, so somewhere around 50-60 leaves to pick, string, and hang.

The change in the leaves over the last couple of weeks has been dramatic. The texture of the surface of the leaf becomes very bumpy....alligator skin like, and they have noticeably thickened. They have gotten very, very, sticky. They shine from the oils and are now drooping from the weight.

I'm excited.

[ashauler]

Harvested the first 1/3 of the leaves from all the plants. I've heard many terms for this priming....viso, volado, primero.....whatever you wanna call it is fine with me. I harvested a total of 54 leaves and have them curing now.

Crop:


Florida Sumatra. 15 leaves harvested, largest leaf 20" x 13"


example FS leaf:


Long Red Leaf:
16 leaves harvested. largest leaf 30" x 14"

example LRL leaf:


Argentina:
6 leaves harvested. largest 24" x 11"


Small Stalk Black Mammoth:
17 leaves harvested. largest, and largest of the crop, 30 1/2 " X 17"



Overall view of the harvest...not a very good pic, but you get the idea:


Some ugly bastard with one of the leaves:


I hung 44 of the leaves using the same air curing method that I started with. I took 10 of the leaves and am trying a different method of color curing them. I'll detail the differences in the curing thread sometime soon.

I'll most likely prime the second 1/3 of leaves next weekend.