Cangrow's 2026, first ever

[cangrow]

1. Burleys, cigar and Virginia varieties should all be topped.
2. No more fertilizer! With flowering this close, more fertilizer will make color curing difficult.
3. 3 weeks after topping is a good minimum.
Virginia tends to ripen at 2 week intervals as you go up the plant. Burley can be stalk harvested and stalk cured when the top leaves show signs of maturity. The cigar varieties should be primed as they mature, to prevent the more fragile leaves from being damaged by bugs and weather.
4. Sun curing is your best choice for the Virginia, but the dry climate may make this difficult. Prime and box cure the cigar varieties- cardboard box with layers of newspaper or paper bag paper in between the leaves. Stalk cured the burley somewhere dark.
5. Once you have color cured, you can kiln at whatever time you can- interrupting kilning and restarting it doesn’t seem to cause any problems, but you MUST get the green color out, first!
6. Oven kiln? I’ve never tried it. Most ovens being given away don’t have precise enough temperature control on their own- so temperature probe and a separate control for the heat would be needed.
7. When topping is done, I only water enough to keep the plant from wilting, to prevent damaging the leaf or having it dry green.

Thank you so much @johnny108 !

 

[StoneCarver]

6. An oven would be overkill as a heat source and the oven box isn't really tall enough to hang long tobacco leaves in. If you want to repurpose an old appliance, people do use old non-functioning refrigerators for kilns. You still need to add a heat and humidity source and a crockpot works well for that.

 

[Havok]

You can sun cure your virginas (and orientals), weather permitting, and I’ve had success and the last few years and the weather has been on our side. You will need to stalk cut the plants so they can draw on the moisture from the stalk, primed leaves will just dry green. The last couple of years mid to late September has been dry and humid (well, for us anyway, 40-55%). You will want them mobile so you can move them to cover if the weather turns. Find a place that gets the most sun, I have a hill that I use that gives me almost 12 hours at that time of year. Just keep your fingers crossed we don’t get one of those early September snow falls.