Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And Nicotiana Rustica....??? Processing...?

[O.S.O.K.]

Hello all. I haven't posted in a while - I was busy bringing-in my sales year (very successfully!!! over 102% of my lofty goal ) and we are also in the process of getting a house built on our property in Mississippi..... so very busy.

But, I am back to thinking about growing tobacco... and so I looked here for a book idea (this place is a book!) but I kind of want a how-to, step by step guide and so anyhoo, was looking at books at Amazon.

So I'm looking at this one - Tobacco Culture - The Cultivator's handbook of natural tobacco by Bill Drake. And looking at the preview - he's talking about Native American tobacco - "nicotiana rustica" - probably misspelling a bit = but anyhoo, thought I'd ask here about this. He states that he got seeds from a NA friend who gathered them from a centuries old burrial site... and they grew... hmm no comment on that.

Any thoughts on this? The author made like that tobacco was almost like smoking pot - made like it's really special or different than nicotiana tobacco varieties - he also has a section about addatives, pestacides and such and obviously aludes to those things being the real cause of cancer from smoking... another topic...

Interesting in the introduction, he talks about "boutique tobacco" and how much you can make growing small amounts...

I would truely love to have a small business of this sort that would allow for an income - my wife could do the bulk of the work to start with while we get it going as she will be without a job when we move - she's willing to give it a try. It would be a start up at that point but if I could make a decent living off of just that - man oh man.

I've already got another thread going about the aspects of production... but I am curious about the "nicotiana rustica" variety and marketability of that....

 

[FmGrowit]

There are about 100 types of "Nicotiana"...one is N. Tabacum. Of N. Tabacum, there are at least 1800 varieties. I don't remember how many varieties of N. Rustica there are, but that's the stuff the guy in the book is referring to.

Rustica is typically known for having a higher nicotine content than most Tabacum varieties. I highly doubt there was any success in growing hundreds year old seeds, but I used to own a utility pole that Paul Bunyan used as a tooth pick...really!....I swear to...I saw him using it. He picked out a side of beef from between his teeth with it.

N. Rustica is a somewhat marketable product. The best advice I can give on that is...grow a bunch of it and you'll have a bunch of it for a long time..., but if you actually do make a connection to sell it, you can get a good price for it. The average plants I grew yielded and five pounds per hundred plants. This compares to about five pounds per 20 plants of N. Tabacum. Some N. Tabacum will yield five pounds in 10 plants. I'm not sure you can get 10 times the money for rustica than tabacum, but I doubt it.

There's a link in the products forum for a digital book CD. It's got 10 (or so) books on the disk and it costs less than $10

 

[O.S.O.K.]

Ah. No free lunch Thanks for the comeback. Sounds like something to grow for yourself just for grins...

 

[BarG]

Native Americans have types of tobacco that are for cultural ceremonies more than for personal pleasure. They are more than likely a rustica considering how old their culture is.