Skafidr's 2026 grow blog

Hello!

I'm starting this blog and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it.

As usual, I'm starting later than I should so I won't expect the best results. This is my third season growing tobacco.

I've received a few new varieties through trade with a fellow user on another community so I'll go with this this year, along with "refreshing" the seeds of one of the first varieties I received:
- Harrow Velvet (new)
- Wisconsin Seedleaf (new)
- Alask Bear Dragon (new)
- Obourg ('old')

The full 32 cells are not occupied by tobacco as I don't have room/time to grow that much: I plan on end up growing 17 tobacco plants.

The other cells are occupied by vegetables (fruits?) and herbs:
- Three varieties of chili peppers
- Bell peppers
- Tomatillos
- Lemon Balm (the big pots on the right; I'll just take the pots out directly when the weather will allow)
- Basil (the smaller pots on the left)

Setup notes:
- The smaller pots are filled with Miracle-Gro's seed starting mix
- The bigger pots contain 'left-over' soil from previously dead plants (recycling the soil); I added a scoop of acti-sol's Pure hen manure in each, then added a thin layer of the Miracle-Gro's seed starting mix (the leftover of what didn't go into the smaller pots)
- Heat mat under the cell tray
- Light cycling: 15-16 hours lights on; I plan on taking those out around June 8, so I've set the lighting time according to the outdoors' lighting pattern at that date.
- Plastic film cover; AFAIR, I'll likely have to move this up a bit to allow more air to move when there will be mould forming

Skafidr said:

Alask Bear Dragon

Click to expand...

It's Alaska Bear Dragon.

Skafidr said:

It's Alaska Bear Dragon.

Click to expand...

Durn, this is giving my ideas for tobacco names and they're not good ones which makes them irresistible to use.
For example: the "man bear pig" variety.

I watered my plants today.

We've annoyingly had some rain on and off during the last couple of weeks and this made it hard to do things right: I needed (wanted?) to re-fertilize but fertilizing just before a rain forecast seemed counterproductive.

So I gave one full watering can to each of the big pots, and half of a can to the smaller ones. Then a third of a water can with fertilizer to each pot.

This season I'll try to give less fertilizer per feeding event, but fertilize more often.

So we have

Obourg



Wisconsin seedleaf



Harrow velvet



And Alaska Bear Dragon




I'll state the obvious, it looks like the Alaska Bear Dragon and Wisconsin Seedleaf are doing well, while Obourg and Harrow Velvet have a harder time.

Why? I don't know. The plastic buckets and the larger volume of soil in the bigger pots may retain water better, while the smaller pots/fabric sides may allow more evaporation. They said that you can't overwater in fabric pots, but it seems it also has some gotchas based on this.

We've also got to the point where the leaves are big enough that they'll send rain water out of the pot rather than in it, so being steady on watering myself rather than relying on the rain will be key.