dubhelix 2019 grow

[dubhelix]

I’m super late this year. Like six weeks late. I didn’t get to sowing seed until the day of last frost in my area (May 15th), so I may run out of curing time in autumn. But if it works out, it’ll be a good and logical progression.

I’m growing Red Front again. It’s an Austrian dark air cured variety. This is my fourth or fifth generation of homegrown seed. I forget.

Anyway, I started seed in vermiculite with a bit of peat moss. I sprinkle the seed along the edge of the starting tray, which helps the seedlings slide out easier. Each seedling is gently plucked out with tweezers and transplanted into an appropriately deep hole poked in the growing mix. I used a bale of fancy organic growing mix with mycelia and stuff from the Hydroponics store. It’s good stuff, man


The transplanted seedlings grow in 50 cell seed-starting trays designed for forestry. They’re deep. Spring for the heavy duty trays. Totally worth it. They’re bottom-watered with straight well water until they have four or five leaves, then they get a light dose of fish emulsion and a haircut at about four weeks from sowing date.


At six weeks I put them in the beds. The soil in the lower orchard is pretty nice. Looks like there was a burn pile there some years ago. I abandoned my upper-pasture tobacco patch location. Too dry, too far from my normal orbits. I’m in the orchard several times a day, and the soil is better, and there’s ducks on patrol.

This bed is about 5’ x 25’. Or so. It’ll take a dozen transplants.

I tilled the top four or five inches, and added some stuff, and tilled it again. I used a few bags of mushroom compost, and a blend of alfalfa meal, rock phosphate, lime and dolomitic lime, gypsum, and Azomite, then raked it smooth to soothe my OCD and aesthetic preferences.

Here’s the fertilizer ratios:
16 scoops seed meal
1 scoop gypsum
1 scoop Ag lime
2 scoops dolomite line
4 scoops rock phosphate
1/2 scoop Azomite powder

Each planting hole gets two shovelfuls of the humbolt-worthy grow mix, forked in and fluffed. The holes are about 3’ apart in a staggered row. Before I transplant, I mow around the bed with the discharge spout pointed toward the bed. After a few spiraling passes with the mower, the bed has a nice coating of fresh grass clippings.

After that the whole patch gets sprinkled with too much ladino clover seed and watered well.

Each transplant gets a thorough Foliar misting of mixed seaweed juice and fulvic acid (1oz/g and 1 tbsp/g) or dilute fish emulsion (1oz/gallon) every other day or so for the first week, to include soaking the fledgling root zone. The whole bed gets lightly watered every evening to sprout the clover.

The transplants were set out this year on the solstice, six weeks from seed.

This year I’m using actively aerated compost tea, made from aerobic bacterial and fungal cultures incubated in a 5-gallon pail with vigorous air flow via air stones and a pump. The brew blend is as follows:

In fine mesh bag:

2 cups earthworm castings
1 cup alfalfa seed meal
1 tablespoon Azomite

In bucket:

4.5 gallons well water
1 oz molasses
1 oz fish emulsion
1 oz seaweed emulsion
1 oz fulvic acid

Brew time on highest air flow setting: 24-36 hours.

I use this stuff as a Foliar spray on my orchard, but I’m just using it as a root soak on the tobacco.

So far so good. The little plants are 52 days from seed and seem robust.

 

[dubhelix]

Six weeks from seed, ready for the field.

 

[CobGuy]

Beautiful ... very nice system!

~Darin

 

[tullius]

Uncle Bill's Sliver Grippers, I gots a pair a them. Best wishes to you for no pests, gentle breezes and an early and bountiful harvest.

 

[dubhelix]

My ducks are efficient bug eaters. Unfortunately...they’re roughing up the tender tobacco leaves.

I’d trade some chewed-up mud lugs for no hornworms, if that’s how it works out.
I guess we’ll see.

 

[Brown Thumb]

It will be ok, you hit slugs or something chowing on them not hornworms.

 

[tullius]

If you put said ducks in a nice soup with onions and cheese and some beef stock, they won't beat up your tobacco. They also won't eat slugs or other pests voraciously either. Choices, choices..

 

[deluxestogie]

Ducks as well as geese are famous for removing pests from tobacco, so long as you protect the youngest and most tender plants. (Ducks and geese also eat tiny, tender greens as part of their normal diet.) They've been used for that in the tobacco belt of Virginia for over 300 years..

Bob

 

[dubhelix]

Most of the plants look pretty good. Thick and verdant, velvety and crenellated.

Except this one. It looks sickly. Maybe TEV if something. I reckon I’ll pull it out.

 

[deluxestogie]

TEV is spread by insects . My experience has been that it seldom seems to spread. Now I just keep an eye on it, and if more of that plant seems to be affected, I may remove the plant.

Bob

 

[dubhelix]

Today I got around to mulching my favored patch and innoculating the wood chips with Stropharia Rugoso-Annulata mycelium.

Hopefully the fungal (and bacterial) activity will contribute to healthy and robust plants, leaving an enriched soil behind at the end of the season.

If nothing else, the mostly-hardwood mulch and the daily watering will keep the soil nice and moist.

Each plant gets 1/12th of a block of sawdust spawn and a half-wheelbarrow full of ramial wood chips. I just crumble up the spawn cube and spread it in a half-moon around the north-ish side of each stalk, and shovel more mulch on top.

This pic is partway through the process, before breaking up the spawn and covering it with wood chips.

You can see how stunted plant #4 is. I cut off the one leaf that looked sick. Maybe it’ll recover. Maybe not.

 

[dubhelix]

This is my actively-aerated compost tea brewer. It makes 5 gallons of nutrient and microbe-rich fluid that helps establish a healthy and vigorous microbiome in the soil, extending the reach of the roots and filling the available niche with beneficient microflora, which will hopefully suppress pathogens.


This particular brew innoculated with glomus interadices and other mycorrhizae from leaf humus that join with plant roots to enable nutrient absorption and build tilth. There’s visible new mycelial clusters floating in the juice after 48 hours.

Science, earth-magic, whatever. The plants really seem to like it.

 

[Charly]

Interesting, I have seen some web pages and videos talking about these compost tea, and while some people are sure about their qualities, there are some other people who says they are useless and can eventually increase unwanted microbes (pathogene) and create unbalanced soils.

I spent a lot of times those last months reading about some gardening methods (permaculture, mulching and other techniques).
This year I begun to use some of these ideas. I already see some good results (with mulching and adding compost/organic mater instead of fertilizer) and will report back at the end of the season what worked.

 

[dubhelix]

Interesting, I have seen some web pages and videos talking about these compost tea, and while some people are sure about their qualities, there are some other people who says they are useless and can eventually increase unwanted microbes (pathogene) and create unbalanced soils.

I spent a lot of times those last months reading about some gardening methods (permaculture, mulching and other techniques).
This year I begun to use some of these ideas. I already see some good results (with mulching and adding compost/organic mater instead of fertilizer) and will report back at the end of the season what worked.

I’m not “sure” about much. I’ve studied permaculture, etc, and there are a lot of ideas that sound “right” to me. My methodology is to acknowledge that the complexity of natural systems is beyond human comprehension, note systems that work, and to mimic or enhance those systems as best I can.

From what I understand, as long as compost teas start with decent ingredients in reasonable concentrations, and as long as they are vigorously aerated to ensure an aerobic environment, the bulk of the microbes will be non-pathogenic.

From what I understand about natural biological systems, the mycorrhizae/root associations and fungal>bacterial fodchaibs are what make organic and mineral exchange possible.

It seems to me that a good soil is more than just sand/silt/clay with the right amount of NPK, but instead a vibrant and alive and rich in microfloral activity.

Though by day I’m a successful professional glass chemist, I am dubious of “science” as being anymore than a parable. A “working model” that helps us attempt manipulating the physical world. But that’s it. It’s no more than a modern religion, in my opinion.

Right now I’m sitting in my laboratory, filled with highly refined materials, robotics, high-temperature furnaces, platinum/Rhodium thermocouples, and digital controls. These are tools I use to make the earth-magic do what I want.

I like to get involved in the various processes. I read, I study, I ruminate, i seem ebtheogenic revelation through minor intuitive insight, and I try a bunch of different stuff to see what works, and what seems like it both works AND aligns with my larger life goals and ethos.

As with all things, I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, here’s a Rot Front plant at 8 weeks from seed (3 weeks from transplanting) with a lighter for scale. Found a baby hornworm today, first one so far, though there’s a couple dozen pinholes on various plants. Maybe the ducks got ‘em.


The leaves have a really robust vascular structure this year, and overall more texture and crenellations than all but best plants from last year.

I’m throwing much more attention at these plants than is probably necessary, but it’s fun and I’m out in the orchard anyway.

I’ve got some aphids in the orchard, though not yet on the tobacco, and I’m trying to keep them knocked back. I’ve had pretty bad aphids on the leaf tips in past years, and I dread the little bastards.

 

[Charly]

I heartily agree with you about what we do really understand about how nature works.
Yes, soil is WAY more than just clay + NPK !

I was really happy to read about permaculture and other "more natural" cultivation methods that just try to imitate nature and not to create an artificial one.
I am pretty sure that if we can have a good and rich soil (and a lot of biodiversity of course), the plants are just loving it !
Fungus (mycelium) and bacteries are doing a great job to give nutrients to the plants, that's a symbiotic relation where all good living material is happy.

I am trying to create such an environment in my garden, but the main part where I grow tobacco is just a big mess (bricks, concrete, metal, ...). So I am trying to create a new "real" soil on top of it, with mulching, compost, wood, grass cut, natural materials...

Since I have not enough material (and time) to change the whole place, I begun with a few beds, they will allow me to see if my work was benefic or not.

Keep up the good work

 

[deluxestogie]

A Philosophical Tangent

Only recently have we noticed that a human being consists mostly of other species that live within the gut and on the skin. (We are not ourselves!) Gut flora often determine which nutrients get absorbed and utilized, and which do not. Skin (and mouth and nasal) flora are often the difference between health and disease.

The analogous organ to a 'gut' in plants is their root system. Think of the roots as a "gut" turned inside out. Without the vast diversity of its symbiotic and saprophitic micro-partners, plants usually do not thrive. Our agribusiness system of focusing on specific, non-living soil ingredients and additives somehow actually works for a handful of commercial crops, but only at the price of requiring that we (the mismanagers) take care of all pest management, and all soil adjustments day by day, month by month, year by year (like hydroponic culture, only in dirt).

As with gut flora, we still do not fully understand the fundamentals of "healthy" soil.

Bob

 

[dubhelix]

Four weeks from setting out, ten weeks from seed. Stalks are getting fat, and the leaves are nice and big.

I just keep spraying them down with the compost tea. Gives me a good chance to inspect the leaves, and they get a good rinse.

I’m starting to get baby hornworms and egg clusters, so I’m gonna dose them with Bt tomorrow. I’ve been pretty good about picking them off, but eventually I’ll miss a day and they’ll have a buffet.

 

[dubhelix]

The Stropharia Rugoso Annulata sawdust spawn has leapt off into the wood chips. Keeping the mushroom patch moist daily means ample water for the tobacco. Had to compress the soil around each plant a bit by stepping lightly close to the stem. High winds today pushed the leafiest plants over a few degrees.

I’ve noticed that most of the plants raise their leaves at night, during rain, and in high wind. The few that don’t raise their leaves have a tendency to get a wilted tip on juvenile leaves.

 

[Alpine]

Do you plan to harvest some mushrooms after tobacco this autumn?

pier

 

[drinkthekoolaid]

Today I got around to mulching my favored patch and innoculating the wood chips with Stropharia Rugoso-Annulata mycelium.

The graden giant! Please post pictures if they end up fruiting. I joked with the wife about innoculating her house plants with P. Cubensis. She didn't find the humor in that...