GrowleyMonster's Grow Thread, 2023

[GrowleyMonster]

First seeds are set. I got some Moldovan 456, some Piloto Cubano, and some Golden Burley seeds set on Jiffy Greenhouse peat pucks. Waiting for some more varieties to arrive: Yellow Leaf, Monte Calme Yellow, and Big Gem. I am putting out a dozen plants of the Moldovan and a half dozen each of all the rest, maybe a few more, but not over 60 plants, at any rate. In a couple of weeks I will set more seeds, backups in case we get a late frost that kills my babies after I transplant. I plan to get them in the ground during the first week of March, after consulting the 10 day forecast. By middle of March our winter is pretty much over.

I really like the Jiffy Self Watering Greenhouse kits. I usually set three seeds per puck and usually all three will sprout. I set out the whole puck with only the strongest looking seedling allowed to survive when I transplant into individual pots or into the ground, and the peat makes a great moisture reservoir for the seedling. I set the Moldovan and Piloto seeds four days ago and there are already some radicals. I also set seeds for red sweet peppers and three types of jalapeños, some Boxcar Willie heirloom tomatoes, Golden Dome broccoli, a cabbage variety, forgot which, and good ol dependable Clemson okra. Also today I planted 60 1015 sweet onion bulbs, some Crimson Giant radishes and Parisian Round carrots. And cilantro. We use a lot of that. Mrs. Monster grows all the greens and other herbs.

She wanted me to concentrate more on the vegetables, which we both eat, rather than the tobacco, which only I smoke, but I am still setting SOME bakky. Meanwhile I got a bunch color cured or still color curing from last year, looking forward to rolling a couple, here in a few weeks, even though none of it has had a chance to age properly. It was a really late crop.

This year's tobacco patch will have much better solar exposure. More wind exposure too, but I will be staking the plants, so no knockdowns. I am using wider spacing, too, and I will rub off all the suckers early on. Looking at getting some ladybugs and BT, too. I got some hornworm and other damage last year. I didn't get much usable wrapper last year but I hope to make up for it this year.

I got a half knocked down fence to fix first, then I can start prepping the new tobacco patch. Katrina flattened it and I can't even mow the grass back there along that fence there without getting gashed, so I am going to try to stand it back up by digging down to around the concrete that the posts are set in, standing them up, and adding a few T posts.Then I will rototill and top dress with several yards of garden soil.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

I took a 6' x 1-1/4" galvanized pipe and threaded a tee on one end, stuck the other end in the hitch receiver on our old Dodge pickup, and used that to shove the fence upright, one post at a time, and then hammered some tee posts in to back it up. End result, fence is vertical again. I laid out a 44' x 10' patch, mowed it short, and as soon as I can get to it, (I got work to do on the boat tomorrow) I will till it and fill it. I am looking at around 13 yards of dirt I need to bring in and that will have to be a pickup load at a time. That's a yard and a half if it is fairly dry, a yard if it has rained in the last day or two.

I have definitely finalized my varieties for this year and I may drop one but I won't be adding any. Moldovan 456, Golden Burley, CT Broadleaf, Monte Calme Yellow, Yellow Leaf, Piloto Cubano, and Big Gem. That's seven varieties. I set six peat pucks of each variety except the Moldovan I set a dozen. I am pretty sure I won't be using all 48, but good to have a few backups in case of a surprise late freeze. I made lots of filler from last year's crop, looking to increase binder and wrapper production and not too worried about filler, and the Piloto should give me some nice filler leaf. Any comments or suggestions on which if any breeds I ought to drop, are welcome. Mrs. Monster would be pleased to see me cut back on the amount of space devoted to Tobacco.

The 10 day forecast has a low temp of 49°F, so weather looks good so far. I have carrots, radishes, cilantro, 1015 onions, and a few okra plants already in the ground. I want to plant the bakky first week of March but I might go earlier with half the seedlings.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

I tilled a 44' x 10' area next to the fence that I pushed back up a few days ago. You can see the little electric tiller I used here.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

So I raised that bed up with an 8" layer of garden soil, mostly compost. On the opposite side of the yard I built a 2' tall raised bed specifically for a single row of tomatoes.

Tobacco has been in the ground for about three weeks now. Bugs got some. I ended up planting 32 seedlings. Four each of Yellow Leaf, Monte Calme Yellow, Golden Burley, Piloto Cubano, Connecticut Broadleaf, Big Gem, and eight of Moldovan 456, just cause I had a good feeling about that one from the very few pics I have seen of it. And in fact, the 456 was the most aggressive in germination and early growth, and most bug resistant, followed by the Connecticut Broadleaf. My selection was very burley heavy, and my objective is to end up with lots of nice big yellow to light tan wrapper leaves. Only the Piloto is really a filler variety, because nearly all of last year's crop is good pretty much only as filler. So next year it will probably be just one wrapper variety and one filler variety, and only about 10 plants of each.

Other stuff planted: three varieties of Jalapeños, red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, celery, carrots, (a short French variety) 1015 onions, bok choy, radishes, cilantro and other herbs, two types of broccoli, Golden Acre cabbage, several types of lettuce, okra of course, sunflowers, Boxcar Willie tomatoes, swiss chard, and other stuff. With the warmer temps of the last two weeks, everything has exploded with growth, particularly the carrots interplanted with the onions. It is a jungle in there. A lot of stuff languished until nighttime temps were up in the 70's and them wham, look out. I will be setting up soaker hoses on the main rows, and next year I will probably use landscape cloth to hold the weeds down. So far we have enjoyed a lot of radishes and romaine in salad, and a few tiny carrots that I had to thin out to get some sun on some pepper plants. We also had a lot of broccoli that survived the winter and came back with some nice big side shoot heads. Let's see... green onions, too, and lots of cilantro. So here it is first half of March and we are already eating from the garden, and I have even rolled and smoked a stogie from last year's tobacco crop. We are still eating on last year's okra that I cut, seal-a-mealed, and froze.

The vacuum sealer has definitely paid for itself.I had to harvest a lot of two foot tall cilantro that was starting to bolt, and I bundled half fist size portions into sealed bags and froze them. I have also successfully prepped and froze celery and onions, and of course the okra. When you remove all of the air and freeze within an hour of harvest, you can get very good results. I may set up a brine tank for quick freezing later this year but really, stuff just frozen normally in the sous vide bags retains all of it's flavor and color, and most of its texture. So yeah, the chest freezer will also pay for itself this year.

Broccoli and lettuce and some other cool weather crops are really hard to grow here in New Orleans, especially in the summer, but much of that I planted in the back bed, against the neighbor's 8 foot high board fence, which shades everything in the afternoon. Additionally I planted the okra in a row along that fence, and on the east edge of that bed I planted a row of sunflowers. Both of those plants cast a lot of shade and usually top over 8 feet. With mulch, soaker hose, and shade, I hope to be harvesting even the lettuce through all except mid july through the end of august. The broccoli that Mrs. Monster planted last year survived and grew during the summer under partial shade, just didn't bear well until winter, so I am not worried about the broc. Okra of course is right at home in our climate, as are the peppers. We use more of those two veggies than anything else except onions. Well, and celery. Celery is supposed to be hard to grow here but I have some coming along nicely that I set out a month ago as seedlings.

I learned my lesson last year. The tobacco will be getting about 10 hours sunlight out of every 12 of daylight, and I will stake every plant, and sucker aggressively. I really want to see some nice looking straight growing plants with lots of big leaves. With so few plants I can do a black light patrol every evening and keep the worms in check. I haven't used any pesticides so far and cutworms I think got the Sun King broccoli. The Castle Dome seems to fight off the bugs better. I may come out with some diatomaceous earth and some sevin dust next week. I have seen a few snails and I think the diatoms will discourage them. and sevin dust isn't particularly toxic. Thinking about BT and ladybugs, too.

Bee activity has been heavy. The bolted cilantro and bolted bok choy from last year had a huge bee following, and I started feeding them. Hopefully I will get some good pollination action this year.

Pics in a couple of weeks.

 

[deluxestogie]

Pics in a couple of weeks.

You may need a faster SD card in your digital camera.

Bob

 

[willgodwin]

Sounds like it's going well. Looking forward to some pics.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

The clear winner seems to be the Golden Burley. It was fast growing, fast maturing, and gave me some nice big leaves. The Moldovan 456 was pretty good, too. I harvested quite a bit of those two already, and a Yellow Leaf that suffered a blow-down. The Piloto Cubano was interesting. One plant is giving me some surprisingly nice big leaves. It was the tallest of all that I planted. The Ct Broadleaf didn't show me much, nor the Yellow Leaf or Monte Calme. Meh. Worth planting, but the Golden Burley is the one I will definitely be concentrating on next year. or this summer for a fall crop.

All the broccoli main heads are in, a couple were a foot across, heaviest one 3lb 3oz. The round Parisian carrots were a big hit and I will plant some more in September, along with some Nantes. The round ones are a PITA to process, between marble and cue ball size. We got good results from the celery and there is still some growing. The Romaine worked out well, and I am letting some go to seed. The bees love it, and the bok choy, which bolted almost immediately this year. The radishes worked out good. The jalapenos all turned out to be some kind of banana pepper. I was REALLY P.O.'d about that. I had to go to Lowes and buy some potted seedlings to replace the ones I ripped out of the ground and stomped into compost. Picked a few peppers from them but we are not self sustaining yet. In a couple of weeks we should be. Okra has been slow, as it craves hot summer temperatures and it hasn't been over 85 for more than two days in a row all year so far. Also it is only getting about 7 hours of sun, next to an 8' tall board fence. I have pulled maybe a half dozen of the 1015 onions. Still not really ready. Usually you pull them when the tops start to die off. Cabbage got massacred by the bugs, and they hit the tobacco hard, too, until I started spraying with BT and Spinosad. No hornworms though, or very few. Those guys eat about 100x their weight in a day, I think, and they get BIG.

The star of the show is the tomatoes, Boxcar Willie. They are finally holding the blooms and popping lots of tomatoes but they are small. Picked a half dozen early ripers so far but there are hundreds of green ones. I will be canning lots of maters & peppers this year, I can see that right now. The various varieties of sweet peppers have been very slow to throw me anything, so it will be all jalapenos and some Tabasco peppers I just planted last week. We froze a bunch of broccoli and celery, as well as cilantro because we ended up with several big giant bushes of it that started to bolt. Boom and bust.

Wife planted a bunch of leaf lettuce and we have been eating that in salads, and her snow peas she planted. She planted a bunch of edamame, i.e. soybeans basically, and I think she wants to make homemade tofu out of it. The bugs massacred the potatoes. They are extinct.

As soon as the bakky in the garage has color cured, I will roll up a stoge or two using the Golden Burley for wrapper and maybe binder, and the mixed bag filler I harvested last year for filler. Should be interesting. I haven't been rolling much but then again I haven't been smoking much, either.

Pics/vids "soon".

 

[GrowleyMonster]

 

[deluxestogie]

Last summer, when my bok choy went to seed, I had hoped to collect the seed, and make mustard from them. Just before they were ready to collect, something ate nearly every one. But the seed of every brassica variety will make its own, uniquely flavored mustard. Even radish seed makes a nice mustard.

Bob

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Last summer, when my bok choy went to seed, I had hoped to collect the seed, and make mustard from them. Just before they were ready to collect, something ate nearly every one. But the seed of every brassica variety will make its own, uniquely flavored mustard. Even radish seed makes a nice mustard.

Bob

Mrs. Monster put some green radish seed pods in the salad the other day. Tasted like radishes, texture of green beans.

 

[deluxestogie]

Make mustard from just the well-dried seeds, excluding the pods. Grind. Add enough vinegar to make a paste.

Bob

 

[FrostD]

Absolutely love this video brother! Jealous of how much you have growing and thriving currently! Those Boxcar Willie Tom’s look crazy! The first plant looks like it will be this year’s Christmas Tree! Lol! Keep it up!

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Picked about half of what remains of my tobacco today. I hadn't noticed how big the Monte Calme Yellow leaves had grown. Here's the bigger ones from the single plant that survived the bugs. 29" long, the biggest ones. Got about 16 leaves from it, still some top leaves left on the plant. I waited too long on the Piloto Cubano. The lugs caught some kind of blight or fungus, and I got a lot of bug bites in the leaves I really had my eye on.

So I am still liking the Golden Burley. Good producer, fast maturing, leaves almost as big as the Monte Calme, and it cures to a beautiful yellowish tan. I was disappointed in the CT Broadleaf this year. I might try it again next year or maybe not. The Moldovan 456 came out pretty good. So my next crop will definitely be big on the Golden Burley, for wrapper and binder leaf, and maybe some of the Piloto for filler. A couple of stalks of the Moldovan and Monte Calme, just for variety and to give them another chance to win my heart and mind. The Yellow Leaf and the Big Gem were just so-so. Interesting leaf shape on the Big Gem. Sort of long and narrow. Curious to see the leaves after curing. Might make a good wrapper for a Long slim cigar. However I am gravitating toward short, stout double ender torpedoes. I cut my binder and wrapper into a big curvy "S" shape so I want fairly broad leaves. Anyway, Yellow Leaf, Big Gem, nice to meet you, but so long sayonara, adios, hasta la byebye,

 

[Alpine]

I grew Big Gem only once: nice plant, little suckering and good yield but finicky to cure and with a very light taste (ok, I’ll be honest: in my grow, taste was almost nonexistent). Went for Yellow Pryor the year after and got something smokable. I finally decided to quit bright leaves for my blend, and go with Dark Virginias instead: good yields, thick leaves that are easy to cure and “manly” smoke.

pier

 

[GrowleyMonster]

I just set the seeds for the second crop of 2023. Check out the cute little label flags, huh? Rainproof.

I'm still liking the Jiffy trays and peat pellets, for seed starting. Super easy and effective, consistent results. Good for most veggies, too. But these days before moving the pucks to a cup of dirt or right into the ground, I always remove the "biodegradeable" paper/cloth wrapper.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Left front, a leaf of Moldovan 456, color curing under tea towel. I am trying something new, to get nice flat leaves and a bright yellow color. The leaves still cure before they dry, protected by tea towel above and below. This leaf was picked about a week ago. Back left, a Moldovan 456 leaf that cured for 6 weeks under towel. I will try this with some bigger leaves next crop. To the right is some fresh picked Yellow Leaf, showing the distinctive mottling of this variety when fully mature. Typical of my plants, anyway. I will be most interested in how it looks after full cure. I will try the towel cure on one leaf and hang the rest in the conventional manner.


Still in the garden, all the Seco and Viso harvested and only Ligero remaining, a stalk of Piloto Cubano, a couple of Moldovan 456, and I think a CTBL. All the rest is harvested and hanging.

 

[RbwGeorge]

Picked about half of what remains of my tobacco today. I hadn't noticed how big the Monte Calme Yellow leaves had grown. Here's the bigger ones from the single plant that survived the bugs. 29" long, the biggest ones. Got about 16 leaves from it, still some top leaves left on the plant. I waited too long on the Piloto Cubano. The lugs caught some kind of blight or fungus, and I got a lot of bug bites in the leaves I really had my eye on.
View attachment 46023
So I am still liking the Golden Burley. Good producer, fast maturing, leaves almost as big as the Monte Calme, and it cures to a beautiful yellowish tan. I was disappointed in the CT Broadleaf this year. I might try it again next year or maybe not. The Moldovan 456 came out pretty good. So my next crop will definitely be big on the Golden Burley, for wrapper and binder leaf, and maybe some of the Piloto for filler. A couple of stalks of the Moldovan and Monte Calme, just for variety and to give them another chance to win my heart and mind. The Yellow Leaf and the Big Gem were just so-so. Interesting leaf shape on the Big Gem. Sort of long and narrow. Curious to see the leaves after curing. Might make a good wrapper for a Long slim cigar. However I am gravitating toward short, stout double ender torpedoes. I cut my binder and wrapper into a big curvy "S" shape so I want fairly broad leaves. Anyway, Yellow Leaf, Big Gem, nice to meet you, but so long sayonara, adios, hasta la byebye,

Those are such pretty leaves!

 

[johnny108]

Left front, a leaf of Moldovan 456, color curing under tea towel. I am trying something new, to get nice flat leaves and a bright yellow color. The leaves still cure before they dry, protected by tea towel above and below. This leaf was picked about a week ago. Back left, a Moldovan 456 leaf that cured for 6 weeks under towel. I will try this with some bigger leaves next crop. To the right is some fresh picked Yellow Leaf, showing the distinctive mottling of this variety when fully mature. Typical of my plants, anyway. I will be most interested in how it looks after full cure. I will try the towel cure on one leaf and hang the rest in the conventional manner.
View attachment 46289

Still in the garden, all the Seco and Viso harvested and only Ligero remaining, a stalk of Piloto Cubano, a couple of Moldovan 456, and I think a CTBL. All the rest is harvested and hanging.

Very pretty! Do you wet the towel, or is it dry?

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Very pretty! Do you wet the towel, or is it dry?

Dry.

 

[Tobaccofieldsforever]

Dry.

I’ve been using towels to yellow leaves of many varieties for years. Picked it up from my dad. You can do large stacks this way but I also wrap the towels in canvas. Be sure to check the stack often. I also rotate the leaves when I check them. There will be a considerable amount of heat and moisture in the middle of the pile. Once leaves are halfway yellowed I move on to either air curing, sun curing etc…