Is there any way to speed up leaves turning yellow on the plant before harvesting?

[vpnisnice]

Hello,

I planted many tobacco plants this year in a few different locations. One location was directly into the ground at a place up beside our outside wall. Last year I knew this area was very high in nitrogen, and it had partial shade, so I thought it was a perfect fit for my tobacco.

The area was probably TOO HIGH in nitrogen, hence why the leaves are still incredibly deeply green. And gorgeous as well I might add.

So is there any way to do anything to speed up the yellowing process of the leaves while they are still in this state, in soil that has an incredibly high nitrogen content?

I will attach 2 photos of one of the plants, and it might not be super easy to see the bottom leaves, but even they are not turning one single smidgen of a shade of yellow. My season has maybe about 2 more weeks left before the first fears of frost will become a possibility, so I am a little concerned that my most beautiful and bountiful plants might not actually turn into good leaves because of the excessive nitrogen of the soil here.

Any help would be much appreciated. I live in a semi-arid zone, very very dry. My other plants have done very well but they were all in fabric bags with different soil.

 

[wruk53]

If your soil is very loose and porous you might try flushing the roots with copious amounts of water every day. Other than that, I don't know. Those are some very dark green leaves.

 

[deluxestogie]

• What variety is that?
• How many days has it been since they were transplanted to the ground?
• Have they been topped?
• If so, when?
• How many hours of direct sunlight have they gotten daily?

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

That plant looks like it's generated by an AI.

Check this out.

Shade-Induced Leaf Senescence in Plants - PMC

Leaf senescence is a vital developmental process that involves the orderly breakdown of macromolecules to transfer nutrients from mature leaves to emerging and reproductive organs. This process is essential for a plant’s overall fitness. Multiple ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[vpnisnice]

• What variety is that?
• How many days has it been since they were transplanted to the ground?
• Have they been topped?
• If so, when?
• How many hours of direct sunlight have they gotten daily?

Bob

Variety is Monte Calme Brun. Transplanted on May 29. Has not been topped. And for the majority of the summer they probably got maybe 2-4 hours of direct sun per day. They are sort of behind a wall of trees so a decent amount of dappled sun, but the majority of full direct sun would have been well past 4pm.

 

[vpnisnice]

That plant looks like it's generated by an AI.

Check this out.

Shade-Induced Leaf Senescence in Plants - PMC

Leaf senescence is a vital developmental process that involves the orderly breakdown of macromolecules to transfer nutrients from mature leaves to emerging and reproductive organs. This process is essential for a plant’s overall fitness. Multiple ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hahah I shall take that as a compliment, but yes insanely photogenic that one. Thanks for the share, I shall get chatgpt to summarize it for me

 

[deluxestogie]

The only thing I can suggest is to top the plants at 14 to 16 leaves, and hope that it accelerates leaf maturation enough to stalk-harvest before a frost. (Stalk harvesting will give the leaves a little more time prior to their drying.) Hang them indoors, in an area not subject to freezing.

As a wild guess, I will blame the substantial lack of direct sunlight for their sluggish growth. [Shade tobaccos use 40% shade cloth, so they get about 60% of direct sun every day.]

Bob

 

[vpnisnice]

The only thing I can suggest is to top the plants at 14 to 16 leaves, and hope that it accelerates leaf maturation enough to stalk-harvest before a frost. (Stalk harvesting will give the leaves a little more time prior to their drying.) Hang them indoors, in an area not subject to freezing.

As a wild guess, I will blame the substantial lack of direct sunlight for their sluggish growth. [Shade tobaccos use 40% shade cloth, so they get about 60% of direct sun every day.]

Bob

Damn this is awesome advice man. I had heard of hanging the whole plant before, but hadn't considered it. And it definitely sounds like a solid option, if nothing else, for these overly green plants. Thank you so much! I will also top some of them right now, as unfortunately I probably got some cross-pollination from the seeds anyways honestly. I just wanted to have a few plants that I didn't top to compare with the ones that I did, and the ones that I did top definitely had very less growth overall tbh. Mind you, those ones were also grown in fabric bags, so all of the factors were not consistent so it's not fair to compare.