Mr. Premise
The Living Force
Foxx said:
Sure, I should get it Wednesday or Thursday. This YouTube video shows the technique I'm planning on using: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8CSmlbI0hM&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLF66B1D38BD1BF142
Looks pretty easy. People also use food processors, but I like the way the YouTube guy's tobacco came out.
Mr. Premise said:
&
The guys quite a tobacco connoisseur - good old fashion system he has there ;) - like it. Thanks for both links.
dant said:Google: "Tobacco shredder"
If you are adventurous, you could make your own shredder?
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRyfuk0ydrU
Came across this before, really impressive little machine he built,
indeed.Mr. Premise
The Living Force
Foxx said:
It arrived today! The Burley is nice, but it does have a bite to it, like cigar tobacco when you inhale. I smoked one that was pure Burley. Burley improves with age, though, and this would benefit from waiting a year or two.
I also got another shipment today that I ordered from this site: http://shop.wholeleaftobacco.com/main.sc
This site is run by the guy who runs the Fair Trade Tobacco forum. I ordered some three year old Burley from him, which I think is grown by the same guy I ordered tobacco plants from. The grower, from Kentucky, has a contract with Philip Morris, but grows for his own use and private sales organically. The 3 year old Burley that came today was much more fragrant than the other that arrived today. Both had a bit of a bite, which is why for cigarettes it's good to blend it no more than half and half with Virginia tobacco. The nice thing about this second order, is that he included a quarter pound of Turkish for free. The Turkish tasted fabulous, very fragrant. His Turkish, though, is the only tobacco he carries that's imported, so I presume it wasn't organically grown. I will check with him to see if he knows.
The nice thing about the second site is that he is stockpiling tobacco from his growers to age. Tobacco improves with a few years aging like wine. The stuff he is buying now will be sold in three years. I will verify from him that his Burley is grown by the guy I think it is and ask him about the Turkish.
Next is to experiment with different blends, but I should wait until the nicotine buzz I have dies down after smoking three in a row.
[edit] I looked at the second site and the Turkish is Bitlis and it is 4 years old! Which is good if there were any pesiticde residues, because depending on the chemical's half life, after that much aging there may be no more residues left.
Here is his description of the Turkish
Mr. Premise
The Living Force
Also, the sites I listed in the previous post will only ship to the US. I did find this site that is in the UK: http://www.wholeleaftobaccoonly.com/Products.html
Of course prices are much higher for you guys in the UK.
Of course prices are much higher for you guys in the UK.
Mr. Premise
The Living Force
I smoked a couple blended ones. Delicious! Tasted like a Camel (or what I remember from having a Camel over 20 years ago). I did 1/2 Virginia 1/2 Burley and some Turkish. Still bites a bit; next I'll try maybe 60% Virginia.
Mr. Premise
The Living Force
Foxx said:
Also, looking at the Kentucky Select website, it looks like for this year, their Organic Dual Purpose Pipe Tobacco is now a blend. From the site http://organic-smoke.com/where_to_buy:
Not sure if there selling old inventory on the Roll Your Own website http://www.rollyourown.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=148_213 or if it's the new blend.
Thomas Alan
The Living Force
Thanks, Mr Premise: I had considered whole leaf tobacco before but did know how I would cut it. The video makes it look fairly easy to cut it by hand.
I am thinking of ordering the cigarette sample pack from http://shop.wholeleaftobacco.com/main.sc. Will give me experience of different types and blends.
Mac
I am thinking of ordering the cigarette sample pack from http://shop.wholeleaftobacco.com/main.sc. Will give me experience of different types and blends.
Mac
Mr. Premise
The Living Force
I’ve started growing tobacco in the garden this year. I bought a couple of books but they are pretty much useless compared to the vast amounts of information you can get on these two forums: http://www.howtogrowtobacco.com/forum/index.php and http://fairtradetobacco.com/forum.php
Thought I’d post a diary of the process for those thinking of trying this.
I’ve spent tons of time researching the process. It’s kind of complicated and there is a lot that can go wrong, pests, viruses, weather (hailstorms are particularly bad, for example) for the growing part and mold, drying green, and equipment needs for the curing/fermenting process. In the previous fall and winter, I developed the part of the garden I was planning on using by tilling it and putting in wood ashes (good for tobacco) from our wood-burning stove and lots of compost. Tobacco uses tons of nutrients. I also put in some organic fertilizer (which I haven’t done before for other vegetables, usually compost has been enough). It’s important not to use certain kinds of industrial fertilizer, since it looks like the problem of radioactive Polonium in tobacco comes from certain types of phosphate fertilizers.
I planted 19 Virginia Bright Leaf, 17 Burley, and 7 Smyrna #9 (a Turkish/Oriental variety).
I started seeds way too late. All the sources say you need to start seeds 2 months before putting them in the ground, but May came around and I realized I needed to order seeds (I ordered seeds from here: http://www.newhopeseed.com/about_tobacco_seed.html) and get them going, but the sources were right, it was too late. The plants start very slowly. Then, just in time, I found there are tobacco farmers online who sell live plants, so I ordered 50 of them from one who is on the forum who still had lots of plants left. He was offering Burley and Virginia, and I asked him if he had any Oriental varieties. He ended up sending me ten Smyrna plants for free as well as numerous extra Virginia and Burley. I ended up getting 70 plants. They arrived in good shape June 4, which is usually about the right time to get them into the ground in my climate. But this spring has been especially warm and favorable, so I could have planted them earlier, but there should be more than enough time to get them to maturity. I got 35 of them in the ground right away. I didn’t have room for more, so I put 25 in pots. That day was called away on a 3-day business trip at the last minute, so I was anxious about the plants. But the weather was favorable for transplanting, four days of gentle rain so they weren’t shocked by sun and heat at transplant time. When I got back home, the plants were alive but not looking too good. One mistake I had, since the plants I got in the mail were pretty mature since it was late in the season, is that I thought I was supposed to plant them at the same soil height they were originally, but it turns out it’s better to snip the lower leaves and put the stem in the ground up to the point of the new leaves, like you can do with tomatoes.
I decided to create another garden plot for the extras, which involved manually digging up turf in an uncultivated part in the back of my property, adding composted cow manure, lime, and fertilizer. A couple of days ago I was able to put 12 more plants in the new plot, putting them in deeper.
But the plants in both plots were still looking weak: yellow leaves except for new growth, small leaves, not much growth. Some of that is normal, tobacco plants take a while, up to three weeks, to get established while they are growing roots, but then when the hot weather comes in July, they take off. But this seemed worse than it should be after they had been in the ground for a week, so I sprayed them with liquid fertilizer and put some in the ground around the plants. That made the difference, now they are looking healthy. They really do need tons of fertilizer at the beginning. And the dry fertilizer I put in the soil (too late, I should have put it in earlier) wasn’t yet accessible to the plants with such small root systems. The trick, though, is you have to stop fertilizing midway through the season, around the time the flowers form. Too much Nitrogen in the leaves at harvest make them cure poorly and burn way too fast when you smoke them.
Because of how susceptible they are to a range of pests (which is why it’s hard to find organic tobacco) I had to get serious about pests for the first time in my gardening career. Before, if yields were lower due to pests, so what, they’re just green beans or kale. But tobacco can be destroyed by pests, so I research organic pest control practices. I am using or plan on using pepper spray with soap, diatomaceous earth, neem oil spray, BT (a bacterium, Bacillus Thuringiensis, approved for organic farming) Spinosad, another bacteria product approved for organic farming, both of the bacteria products are used to control hornworms, cutworms, caterpillars, and other things like that. So does spreading diatomaceous earth around the plants, any worm or crawling insect that gets it on or in them will die, but it has to be dry to work, so you have to reapply it after rains. The soap/pepper sprays will control flying pests like aphids, etc. For slugs you can put out pans of beer, which is good because I still have some beer in the basement which is old and just sitting there since I went fully Paleo a year ago and gluten-free before that. At least I have a use for it now. So far the pests have been under control, although a couple of nights ago, some animal, either a rodent or a cat decided to try to crawl under the straw mulch I had in the far plot in the back and destroyed one plant. That’s when I decided to make some hot pepper/soap spray, since that will not only kill insects, but also repel mammal pests.
The next step, in July, is to keep on the lookout for the development of flowers. After the flowers appear, usually sixty days or so after putting them in the ground, you have to cut them off along with some of the top leaves below the flowers. It’s called ‘topping’ and the reason is to have the plant concentrate its energy on developing the existing leaves. If you want seed you can allow a few plants to flower and put pollination bags over the flowers. Tobacco plants are self-pollinating and if you are growing more than one variety, or if anyone else in your county is growing tobacco, you don’t want cross-pollination.
Then, after you top, the plants start furiously putting out “suckers,” or new branches where the leaf and the stalk join. You need to “sucker” the plants by removing any suckers, they will just take energy away from developing the leaves on the stalk.
Then there are two ways to harvest the leaves (this will start in August): all at once but cutting down the whole plant, or by “priming” harvesting each leaf as it becomes mature. I plan to prime, so as not to have too many leaves to dry at once.
Then you have to hang the leaves up to dry in a warm, ventilated place, so that they dry slowly enough to turn golden brown. If they dry green, it’s bad. The idea is you don’t want the leaves to die, they need to continue metabolic and enzyme processes for a year or more, even.
After they "color-cure" as the slow drying process is called, you have to ferment the leaves. This can be done slowly, just by hanging the leaves indoors for a year, or quickly using a kiln. The kiln fermenting process need only take three or four weeks. The idea is to put the color-cured leaves in a chamber at 115F to 125F and 70% humidity with some ventilation and some air circulation. This is needed to get rid of ammonia and make the tobacco taste good among many other things. People say that unfermented tobacco smells like hay and tastes awful. So at some point I have to build a kiln. There are good designs for kilns using crockpots as both a heat and humidity source.
Simple, huh? :P
I'll continue this as the process goes on, and get some pictures up, too.
Thought I’d post a diary of the process for those thinking of trying this.
I’ve spent tons of time researching the process. It’s kind of complicated and there is a lot that can go wrong, pests, viruses, weather (hailstorms are particularly bad, for example) for the growing part and mold, drying green, and equipment needs for the curing/fermenting process. In the previous fall and winter, I developed the part of the garden I was planning on using by tilling it and putting in wood ashes (good for tobacco) from our wood-burning stove and lots of compost. Tobacco uses tons of nutrients. I also put in some organic fertilizer (which I haven’t done before for other vegetables, usually compost has been enough). It’s important not to use certain kinds of industrial fertilizer, since it looks like the problem of radioactive Polonium in tobacco comes from certain types of phosphate fertilizers.
I planted 19 Virginia Bright Leaf, 17 Burley, and 7 Smyrna #9 (a Turkish/Oriental variety).
I started seeds way too late. All the sources say you need to start seeds 2 months before putting them in the ground, but May came around and I realized I needed to order seeds (I ordered seeds from here: http://www.newhopeseed.com/about_tobacco_seed.html) and get them going, but the sources were right, it was too late. The plants start very slowly. Then, just in time, I found there are tobacco farmers online who sell live plants, so I ordered 50 of them from one who is on the forum who still had lots of plants left. He was offering Burley and Virginia, and I asked him if he had any Oriental varieties. He ended up sending me ten Smyrna plants for free as well as numerous extra Virginia and Burley. I ended up getting 70 plants. They arrived in good shape June 4, which is usually about the right time to get them into the ground in my climate. But this spring has been especially warm and favorable, so I could have planted them earlier, but there should be more than enough time to get them to maturity. I got 35 of them in the ground right away. I didn’t have room for more, so I put 25 in pots. That day was called away on a 3-day business trip at the last minute, so I was anxious about the plants. But the weather was favorable for transplanting, four days of gentle rain so they weren’t shocked by sun and heat at transplant time. When I got back home, the plants were alive but not looking too good. One mistake I had, since the plants I got in the mail were pretty mature since it was late in the season, is that I thought I was supposed to plant them at the same soil height they were originally, but it turns out it’s better to snip the lower leaves and put the stem in the ground up to the point of the new leaves, like you can do with tomatoes.
I decided to create another garden plot for the extras, which involved manually digging up turf in an uncultivated part in the back of my property, adding composted cow manure, lime, and fertilizer. A couple of days ago I was able to put 12 more plants in the new plot, putting them in deeper.
But the plants in both plots were still looking weak: yellow leaves except for new growth, small leaves, not much growth. Some of that is normal, tobacco plants take a while, up to three weeks, to get established while they are growing roots, but then when the hot weather comes in July, they take off. But this seemed worse than it should be after they had been in the ground for a week, so I sprayed them with liquid fertilizer and put some in the ground around the plants. That made the difference, now they are looking healthy. They really do need tons of fertilizer at the beginning. And the dry fertilizer I put in the soil (too late, I should have put it in earlier) wasn’t yet accessible to the plants with such small root systems. The trick, though, is you have to stop fertilizing midway through the season, around the time the flowers form. Too much Nitrogen in the leaves at harvest make them cure poorly and burn way too fast when you smoke them.
Because of how susceptible they are to a range of pests (which is why it’s hard to find organic tobacco) I had to get serious about pests for the first time in my gardening career. Before, if yields were lower due to pests, so what, they’re just green beans or kale. But tobacco can be destroyed by pests, so I research organic pest control practices. I am using or plan on using pepper spray with soap, diatomaceous earth, neem oil spray, BT (a bacterium, Bacillus Thuringiensis, approved for organic farming) Spinosad, another bacteria product approved for organic farming, both of the bacteria products are used to control hornworms, cutworms, caterpillars, and other things like that. So does spreading diatomaceous earth around the plants, any worm or crawling insect that gets it on or in them will die, but it has to be dry to work, so you have to reapply it after rains. The soap/pepper sprays will control flying pests like aphids, etc. For slugs you can put out pans of beer, which is good because I still have some beer in the basement which is old and just sitting there since I went fully Paleo a year ago and gluten-free before that. At least I have a use for it now. So far the pests have been under control, although a couple of nights ago, some animal, either a rodent or a cat decided to try to crawl under the straw mulch I had in the far plot in the back and destroyed one plant. That’s when I decided to make some hot pepper/soap spray, since that will not only kill insects, but also repel mammal pests.
The next step, in July, is to keep on the lookout for the development of flowers. After the flowers appear, usually sixty days or so after putting them in the ground, you have to cut them off along with some of the top leaves below the flowers. It’s called ‘topping’ and the reason is to have the plant concentrate its energy on developing the existing leaves. If you want seed you can allow a few plants to flower and put pollination bags over the flowers. Tobacco plants are self-pollinating and if you are growing more than one variety, or if anyone else in your county is growing tobacco, you don’t want cross-pollination.
Then, after you top, the plants start furiously putting out “suckers,” or new branches where the leaf and the stalk join. You need to “sucker” the plants by removing any suckers, they will just take energy away from developing the leaves on the stalk.
Then there are two ways to harvest the leaves (this will start in August): all at once but cutting down the whole plant, or by “priming” harvesting each leaf as it becomes mature. I plan to prime, so as not to have too many leaves to dry at once.
Then you have to hang the leaves up to dry in a warm, ventilated place, so that they dry slowly enough to turn golden brown. If they dry green, it’s bad. The idea is you don’t want the leaves to die, they need to continue metabolic and enzyme processes for a year or more, even.
After they "color-cure" as the slow drying process is called, you have to ferment the leaves. This can be done slowly, just by hanging the leaves indoors for a year, or quickly using a kiln. The kiln fermenting process need only take three or four weeks. The idea is to put the color-cured leaves in a chamber at 115F to 125F and 70% humidity with some ventilation and some air circulation. This is needed to get rid of ammonia and make the tobacco taste good among many other things. People say that unfermented tobacco smells like hay and tastes awful. So at some point I have to build a kiln. There are good designs for kilns using crockpots as both a heat and humidity source.
Simple, huh? :P
I'll continue this as the process goes on, and get some pictures up, too.
Palinurus
The Living Force
As a nonsmoker I lost sight a bit on this thread but I have to say this current page (101) makes a fascinating read again. Many thanks to all participants.
I live in an apartment on the outskirts of town and I'm not a gardiner at all but as a very young kid I always was fascinated by the hobby of my paternal grandmother who had a vast garden including a vegetable corner, plenty of fruit trees and shrubs, radishes, strawberries and so on. She was always busy gardening and I sometimes was allowed to help a bit while she filled me in with all the details of the growing processes. The report about the pitfalls of trying to grow your own tobacco revived quite a few pleasant memories in me about all that. So a special thank you goes to Mr. Premise for sharing those particulars. ;)
I live in an apartment on the outskirts of town and I'm not a gardiner at all but as a very young kid I always was fascinated by the hobby of my paternal grandmother who had a vast garden including a vegetable corner, plenty of fruit trees and shrubs, radishes, strawberries and so on. She was always busy gardening and I sometimes was allowed to help a bit while she filled me in with all the details of the growing processes. The report about the pitfalls of trying to grow your own tobacco revived quite a few pleasant memories in me about all that. So a special thank you goes to Mr. Premise for sharing those particulars. ;)
nice Mr. Premise !
I look forward to your pictures !
I also plant tobacco this year 40 plants (7different sorts).
I'll have some comments and questions to your last post I'll post them tomorrow.
I also have made some pictures of my plants and will post them too.
did you ever plant tobacco before or is it also your first time?
I look forward to your pictures !
I also plant tobacco this year 40 plants (7different sorts).
I'll have some comments and questions to your last post I'll post them tomorrow.
I also have made some pictures of my plants and will post them too.
did you ever plant tobacco before or is it also your first time?
Mr. Premise
The Living Force
It's my first time!Pashalis said: