M14 Forum

huntinghawk

I think I had bought seeds from the wrong place the first time. Each of these pics is a different variety & all are doing better then anything I had tried before.

huntinghawk

This is where I got the new seeds.
http://www.newhopeseed.com/tobacco_seeds.html

One batch is orinoco, one is burley, & the third is a silver leaf.

ODJr1

I hope you much success being a smoker myself 5 dollars plus per pack is murder. Keep us posted.

huntinghawk

I'm thrilled with what the sprouts are doing. Wish my originals sprouts had done as well back in March when I started. But appears I fought for months with bad seeds.

Just have to learn what works for you & that will take a year or two.

Home growing tobacco isn't a short term investment. Financially its not feasible. You have to be in it for the long haul. Pots, soil, shredder, etc for a year or two isn't a good investment. But for years it is.

This first year I'm just hoping to get something to smoke. But this year is about learning & getting my stuff together for the future.

HH

adrbe

I've never grown tobacco, but I have some general gardening experience.

Some tips you probably already know:

1.) The bigger the pot, the higher the yield you can expect (generally). I've read that generally 50% of the plant's mass is in the root structure and the other 50% is vegetative growth. Grow your roots big!

2.) Bigger plants do not always mean higher yield.

3.) You can forgo dealing with seeds by cloning existing plants when in the vegetative growth phase (before flowering). It's easy to do, and will take the seed variable out of the equation.

4.) You mentioned a grow light -- CFL lights will do fine for sprouting. Get one with high output (HO) 24 watt bulbs from a gardening shop. Also note that some bulbs' output light frequencies are preferred for vegetative growth, and some bulbs are made for flowering. In my experience: blue spectrum = veg, red spectrum = flower.

5.) Careful with wood around your garden because it is prone to mold. Where your pots sit on the wooden stand will get a lot of water, and if mold grows it will spread to your plants quickly.

6.) When moving plants from indoors to outdoors, harden them off by only putting them outside briefly at first and working up gradually. Direct sunlight and wind, even for just an hour, has trashed my plants before. I would recommend moving them outside in a shady, low-wind area for the first week. Remember, they're in pots so the roots aren't protected very well from temperature changes.

huntinghawk

A key item when growing in pots is knowing how deep the roots go for a particular plant. I need atleast 12" for tobacco.

charlesPOSTLEwade

I am trying to quit smoking and theres a thread on growing the Leaf.Oh Me OH My it just ain't Right LOL

m14nm

Could you use peet pots so you only transplant once? Also you could Google making pots out of newspaper.


Thanks for all the information your passing along. Been thinking about it for a few years now myself. Ever sense my son-in-law told me he worked on a tobacco farm in N/C. Cigarettes here just jumped $5.00 a carton, to $28.95. I buy them on the Seneca Indian Reservation, 9 miles from home. So far, no taxes on the Seneca Nation's tobacco.

Keep us posted, pictures are worth a thousand words also.

BigBill

My uncle who didn't have much money in the 60's and 70's would make his own cigarettes. He had the paper and a little rollin machine that you put the paper and tobbaco in and a flip of the handle it made one cigarette. I thought it was kind of funny then but i'm sure he is looking down at me today laughing. He was a kid from the hills of VT but he could make anything from cigarettes to fireworks. Bill

huntinghawk

And use to be able to mail order cigarettes from the reservations but Obama stopped that.

My plan is starting seeds in the coffee containers which are free then will only have to transplant them once which will be into 5gal buckets.

HH

huntinghawk

I can see improvements daily in my sprouts. I just hope they all of a sudden don't die like all my previous attempts.

HH

adrbe

Another thought came to mind that might be helpful if you haven't already considered it:
If you're on city water, there is probably a lot of chlorine in it. If you leave the water in an open-air container overnight, the chlorine will evaporate and it should be better for your plants.

Here's a decent article I found:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa260

It mentions that the soil pH should be 5.8, which basically means your water should be 5.8 as well. In my experience, plants like it a bit acidic and rainwater pH reflects this. My city water is usually close to 7 or a bit higher. You can buy pH Up and Down solutions to adjust your water before giving it to your plants.

If you don't already check your pH, I would suggest avoiding the soil pH testers, because they can be inaccurate. I'd just go with a good liquid pH tester. You can test your soil pH by taking a reading of the water beforehand, then comparing it to the pH of the run-off after watering. If it doesn't match, then your soil pH is off. You can try soil additives to adjust the pH, but I would just keep flushing with 5.8 and it will balance out after a few waterings.

Happy gardening!

huntinghawk

182ft well here with 117ft drop pipe.

huntinghawk

Here's my orinoco this morning. We had some rain last night.

huntinghawk

I won't have enough time for a full growing season with these plants. But hoping some get atleast 4ft. It will give me enough tobacco to do some mix ratios to decide what I want for next year.

Some of my plants are at their third level of leaves. None of what I had previously purchased & planted made it to the second level.

HH