Sun curing Prilep 66-9/7

[crasch]

I am currently sun-curing my Prilep 66-9/7, to be used for pipe tobacco. For the third priming, I took some detailed progress photos and logged some data to share here.

I string primed leaves front-to-front and back-to-back onto a wire as tightly as I can fit them. I harvest in the afternoon (Day 0) and the leaves wilt a bit over night. The following morning, the leaves go into the full sun and I move them between two locations once a day to make sure they are exposed to direct sun as much as possible. Each labelled photo below is from the morning of the indicated day. Once the stems are fully brittle, I wait until the following morning when everything is in high case again to take the leaves of the wire, sort out any trash, and bundle rest. The process took 12 days this time.

Results at the end. Everything cured very nicely with minimal trash.

 

[crasch]

Here are the environmental conditions while curing. I'm in the Houston, TX area. The leaves were in the sun, the thermometer and humidity sensor obviously in the shade. I had to save the leaves from a rain shower once, but otherwise we had warm and sunny days.

Average Temp: 86.4F
Average RH: 74.7%

 

[deluxestogie]

Excellent documentation as well as results. I've added this thread to our Index of Key Forum Threads.

Bob

 

[crasch]

There is an impostor in my Prilep. One of the plants grew easily twice as tall as everyone else, with an entirely different appearance. It has a much thicker stem and bigger leaves and it is taking a bit longer to mature. It lived without fertilization or irrigation, just like the Prilep around it, and it still out-competed its closely spaced neighbors. I did not notice any difference in the seedlings at planting time. I only seeded a single variety for this batch, so who knows what snuck into the nwtseeds Prilep packet. I'm going to sun-cure it with the rest, just to see what happens.

 

[johnny108]

Every time I’ve planted Prilep, I’ve had one turn into a “monster” version of the plant- after curing, it smelled the same as the rest.
Genetic variation of some sort, I figured.
Too bad my season is too short for seeds, because I’d like to see if the mutant larger plant has larger offspring, as well…

 

[crasch]

Every time I’ve planted Prilep, I’ve had one turn into a “monster” version of the plant- after curing, it smelled the same as the rest.
Genetic variation of some sort, I figured.
Too bad my season is too short for seeds, because I’d like to see if the mutant larger plant has larger offspring, as well…

Interesting. I thought of keeping seeds, too, but ended up topping the monster so I wouldn't have to mess with bagging the rest of the seed heads I planned on keeping. Here's a photo of the thing with the Prilep flowerhead in the foreground.



Nothing suspicious 3 months ago at time of planting:

 

[TigerTom]

Interesting. I thought of keeping seeds, too, but ended up topping the monster so I wouldn't have to mess with bagging the rest of the seed heads I planned on keeping. Here's a photo of the thing with the Prilep flowerhead in the foreground.

Any chance you could overwinter it? Tobacco plants are naturally perennial, so you could continue growing it next year and get seeds then.

 

[deluxestogie]

continue growing it next year and get seeds then

It is most likely an error—a stray seed acquired somewhere along the supply chain. It's why seed should be saved only from a "typical" plant of a specific variety. When tobacco blossoms of a specific variety are properly bagged, the resulting seed is presumed to be homozygous.

Bob

 

[TigerTom]

It is most likely an error—a stray seed acquired somewhere along the supply chain. It's why seed should be saved only from a "typical" plant of a specific variety. When tobacco blossoms of a specific variety are properly bagged, the resulting seed is presumed to be homozygous.

Bob

Right. However, I didn't mean he should use to save seeds as an example of Prilep, but as a possibly unique plant with its own qualities.