Plastic Bag Color Curing?

[ProZachJ]

In his book "Tobacco" Ian Gately offers an appendix on growing tobacco, in the section on harvesting and curing he states that a "rudimentary curing method" is to "stack the leaves on top of one another, wrap in a double layer of plastic bags, and place in the sunshine...should take 4-5 days"

Seems similar to the box pile curing method but he doesn't mention anything about restacking or airing out. Anyone tried this? Thoughts?

 

[GreenDragon]

Sounds like a recipe for mold and rot to me.

 

[furryfreek]

Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like a great way of composting your tobacco. Also, plastic and UV don't get on too well; I'd be worried about nasty stuff leaching out of the plastic.

 

[johnny108]

DON’T DO IT!
It ruins the leaf. Kills all flavor and aroma, plus makes it as thin as tissue paper and it won’t burn.
I got the same results on a car dashboard and on a table in the sun: failure.

Carjangan (?)

Fresh leaf Bagged on the dashboard One work day later….

fairtradetobacco.com

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Ditto.
I'm glad everyone came down hard. Gately clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[deluxestogie]

Gately wrote over two decades ago, prior to the expansion of knowledge about home-growing (e.g. HTGT and FTT forums), and likely relied on some content of books from the 19th century. Most of the 20th century publications were fairly specific to multi-acre tobacco farming, and did not really address what to do with the leaf after it came out of the barn, and was sold to the industry buyers.

Bob

 

[ProZachJ]

Thanks all...don't worry I'm not planning to try this... right now my tentative plan is to hang in my spare greenhouse after covering the roof with 70% shadecloth. The greenhouse only gets about 3-4 hours of direct sun in the morning due to a large oak to the west having extended a branch over it in the last 7 years since I put it up.

I might try box curing a small amount too. Right now I've got some of my caterpillar casualties (I've had a handfull of plants bitten through the stem) doing both ways and both seem to be working fine.

I was more curious why I couldn't find any other info on Gately's supposed method. Probably because as this thread has pointed out it's not a viable method.

 

[johnny108]

I stalk harvest everything I can- it colors up nicely without as much work.
For Orientals, I boxy cure. A few big Amazon boxes with some brown paper to fill in the empty space works great.
You just have to re-shuffle the leaves every day to prevent mold.
And- don't forget to check for caterpillars, etc. when you harvest- they will chew up your leaves after you harvest them, too!