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.

 

[cangrow]

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.

Good to know, thanks @Havok, where abouts are you in this huge province?

 

[Havok]

Cochrane.

 

[Havok]

…sorry, “dry and humid” maybe wasn’t the best choice of words. “Rain-free and humid” (compared to our usual 10%).

 

[cangrow]

80 days since starting seeds
59 days since planting seedlings outside in vegetable garden
52 days since planting larger seedlings outside in S-facing tobacco patch

Hey all,

I took a few pics of the patch tonight because overnight lows are dropping down to 5C tonight and 1C tomorrow night, so the days might be counted.
Growth has been tremendous since last post just over 3 weeks ago. The burleys started flowering first and all got topped about 1.5 weeks ago. I did save the tallest one from decapitation for curiosity's sake in order to see how tall it could get and because a friend expressed an interest in growing tobacco over the winter using an indoor grow tent. The tall one tops out at 6'1", taller than me!


The patch of smaller plants has also done well, though not as well as the big-plant patch. Between now and the spring, I'll take time to homogenize things better when it comes to soil and I may even attempt to grow a long patch along the back alley in a very exposed, sunny location.

For my overnight lows of 1C on Friday night, I think I might harvest half of the plants and hope that the rest can tough out the cold if it really does get that cold. Thoughts? -The thing is, overnight lows jump back up to 4, 5, 6 degrees, perhaps even higher, after this cool dip. I wouldn't mind letting things mature as much as possible on the stalk and it hasn't been 3 weeks since topping for the burleys. Average first frost date here is Sept 18th, btw.

I remember reading somewhere here that plants toughed temps as low as -3C? The way I see it, pure water freezes at 0C, but there's no pure water in these plants, meaning their freezing point is below 0C. Plus, they're now quite large, so that's a bit mass of water that would have to freeze. Finally, these seeds did come from 150km south of here, from an almost identical climate, so I could assume that they might be semi-cold-resistant? I'd love to hear from other locals or northern-latitude types. Happy harvesting and curing!

G

 

[MadFarmer]

What varieties are you growing? I've had mature North American cultivated varieties make it through (several) light frost when the Cuban seed ones did not.

 

[Wombat_smokes]

Most plants will tolerate 4°C/39.2°F, but 3°C/37.4°F and lower will risk leaf damage. I was extremely lucky that me Virginas (Frog Eye Orinoco & Yellow Pryor) and Burley (Shargo) survived a late spring freeze (1°C - 3°C). Your mature (yellowing at the tips) and ripe (25% or more yellowed) leaves will be dmaged or ruined by this cold snap. I would definitely harvest and "box" cure the mature/ripe leaves.

Stalk harvesting & stalk curing the air cured Burley and Bolivian Criollo Black is a good choice to get the not yet mature upper leaves cured. I wouldn't count on enough warmth left in the season to sun cure the Virgina Gold, so flue or air curing would be best.