Growing Your Own Pipe Tobacco
In this short article I’ll briefly talk about growing tobacco at home but I plan on elaborating on it in the near future.
I was surprised how well the Virginia tobacco grew given my location in the Central California mountains. This tobacco was grown at 3,000 elevation where humidity is very low and summer daytime temperatures can reach the upper 90s. The tobacco plants grew fast and in just over 3 months grew to just below 6 feet and the larger tobacco leafs were nearly 2 feet long.
I harvested the leaves in batches as they turned a yellow color and did my final harvest in October. The leaves are now in large jars and have been aging for 7 months so far. Once they are at a year old I will then processes them and add a touch of perique tobacco and reseal them for another year.
I have smoked some of the Virginia tobacco from my garden. It wasn’t bad but had a taste that needed a little age to mellow out.
If you are interested in Virginia tobacco seeds I let my healthiest plant come to full flower and I collected all of the seed pods. These seeds are now for sale if you’d like to try your hand at growing Virginia tobacco. My daughter will be handing these sales to earn a little money.
A few recources for growing tobacco
Below are a few resources to look into until I can share my growing experience in-depth. Note that my experience is limited and I am still learning but I can share how I got such good results. Most of what I learned I got from these two sites as well as some YouTube videos on growing tobacco. Click here to buy a few hundred seeds for $4.50 (shipping included).
Growing Heirloom Tobacco – http://heirloomtobacco.com/Garden_Coop.html
Fair Trade Tobacco forums – http://fairtradetobacco.com/