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by alist
on Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 pm |
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| I guess I spoke too soon as far as trashing my plants. They are setting out flower buds. Should I cut the flower buds off? Doesn't this mean they have reached maturity? Should I begin harvesting the leaves? I can't believe this is happening, particularly given how cool it is overnight. |
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alist
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by libertarian99
on Fri Nov 06, 2009 7:28 pm |
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alist wrote: I guess I spoke too soon as far as trashing my plants. They are setting out flower buds. Should I cut the flower buds off? Doesn't this mean they have reached maturity? Should I begin harvesting the leaves? I can't believe this is happening, particularly given how cool it is overnight. |
Last edited by libertarian99 on Wed Nov 18, 2009 7:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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libertarian99
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by alist
on Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:27 am |
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My shoe is a size 12, which gives an idea of the size of the leaves:
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alist
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by libertarian99
on Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:31 pm |
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alist wrote: My shoe is a size 12, which gives an idea of the size of the leaves:
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Last edited by libertarian99 on Wed Nov 18, 2009 7:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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libertarian99
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by alist
on Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:46 pm |
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libertarian99 wrote: Wow! That is unbelievable.
I am just as shocked as you. The size makes me think of elephant ear plants.
libertarian99 wrote:
I only had a few plants with leaves that size because I bought a seed packet blend with all different size plants.
This plant is Virginia Gold. I got the seeds from seedman.
libertarian99 wrote:
The leaves I had that size went straight from dark green to brown after I plucked them off the plant.
I harvested yesterday, but only because it was going down to 36 F overnight. I washed them, then hung them to dry.
libertarian99 wrote:
If it turns out they weren't ripe, at least you can practice curing the leaves and shredding.
I am growing to make snus, which only requires 90 days of air-curing. I will have to then grind the leaves to powder prior to pasteurization.
Question:
The leaves from the Turkish are in all different sizes. I had to leave town roughly two weeks after I planted. I was out of town for 3 months. The Virginia grew 'fountain' style, pushing these huge leaves off of the main stalk. The Turkish must LOVE to put out suckers. Now, I know I am supposed to pluck the suckers, in order to force large leaf growth off the main stem. However, I was out of town, so the Turkish had suckers galore. The leaves from the Turkish are therefore in a large range of sizes, from half dollar size, on up to not quite as large as the Virginia Gold. Can I use the smaller Turkish leaves, or should I trash them?
While I was out of town, my sister decided she wanted to put in flower beds, which I know nothing about. After consulting with a friend, who should have been a horticulturist, we came up with a nice design for her yard. My friend suggested double digging the beds with a roto-tiller. However, Google is my friend, who told me about lasagna gardening, aka sheet-composting, no-dig or 'composting in place.' (see Patricia Lanza, or better yet, Ruth Stout, who started it all). Given my laziness, I chose to go the lasagna route instead of double digging. It took a bit of money, but not much, since Lowe's has bags of cow manure for $1.38. Once the layers are down, they rot from fall through winter, leaving very nicely decomposed beds for spring planting. Given tobacco is well known for stripping nitrogen from the soil (which well rotted manure would most certainly replace), it occurs to me that it isn't too late yet to lay down some lasagna beds here for the 2010 baccy planting. Considering we are still mowing, which not only provides grass clippings in the bag, but also chopped leaves (as they are falling from the trees in the fall season) for the lasagna layers, I may yet do a bit of work here in the yard to prepare for the 2010 planting season. |
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alist
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by libertarian99
on Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:34 pm |
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alist wrote: Question:
The leaves from the Turkish are in all different sizes. I had to leave town roughly two weeks after I planted. I was out of town for 3 months. The Virginia grew 'fountain' style, pushing these huge leaves off of the main stalk. The Turkish must LOVE to put out suckers. Now, I know I am supposed to pluck the suckers, in order to force large leaf growth off the main stem. However, I was out of town, so the Turkish had suckers galore. The leaves from the Turkish are therefore in a large range of sizes, from half dollar size, on up to not quite as large as the Virginia Gold. Can I use the smaller Turkish leaves, or should I trash them? |
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by alist
on Wed Nov 11, 2009 6:44 am |
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My guru said he tosses the smaller leaves into his compost pile, but then he grows MUCH tobacco. So I compromised between libertarian99's advice and his. I tossed leaves smaller than 6 inches. Those leaves that were sized between 6 inches and full size, I am attempting to 'sweat' to yellow using a towel. The full size leaves were pierced at the stalks with paperclips folded out, such that once pierced, the leaves could be hung on coat hangers to dry. The Turkish leaves have all dried green. The Virginia leaves are yellowing in spots. Someone on the Snuson forums told me for snus, it doesn't matter if the leaves dry green, so we shall see.
My guru has a method of harvesting two crops out of one season. The first harvest is harvested as usual. The second harvest is a sucker crop. Here is the description of this method:
"What do I mean by second growth and third growth? After harvesting I cut the original stalks to two or three leaf nodes and allowed one sucker to grow. They grew to nice leaf producing stalks for what I call my "sucker crop". I plan to plant earlier next year, reducing my total number of plants to 120 - 150 but harvesting early enough to allow the "sucker crop" time to mature. This way I'll get nearly twice the yield from a given number of plants. From 120 plants I could probably get 50 lbs." (Read the second post on this page by the user 'tekwyzrd,' which has the picture of the Samsun leaf.) |
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