Trials and tribulations of my first attempt

[DonH]

How long does it normally take a tobacco plant to ripen?? My plants were put into the tunnel on August 4, and today they look like this:
View attachment 13308

None of them are yellowing in any way. About 11 or so have been topped for a couple of weeks already...Eck.
(By the way, from the above photo, is it possible to confirm that these really are Virginia plants????

These leaves actually are yellowing. The ones that are mottled with yellow parts can be picked. Some people wait longer if they want stronger flavored leaf. I picked mine this year at the stage many of those leaves are because I planted late and frosts were coming. Since my curing area is low humidity, I color cured them by stacking them (restacking them daily so they wouldn't compost) but it took 8 days or so to mostly color cure them (this is air drying not flue curing).

Also, they look like Virginia plants to me.

 

[Bex]

Thanks guys. I get it now - you start out with both of them full, the crockpot sucks the water in - as its level drops and you then see the level on the jug on the outside dropping as well and know when to add water to keep the pot full (or whatever height you started with). The 'feed tube' ends must be at the same height, as well, no? On the bottom of both containers?? Science lesson learned for the day. This is probably a much better set up than my own, as you always know how much water is in the pot without looking, and presumably most of it doesn't end up on the floor of the chamber, either. However, I think the set up is a bit fiddly for me to try, without a lot of practice, first.....

And no, I'm not going to give up on this run. Funnily enough, trial and error once again seems to save the day. First, I put some blankets on the freezer - while the temp was then easily reached, the humidity is still a bit of a problem - still hovering around 80%. So I opened the container - really more to dump some humidity, if possible, than anything else. And voila - the midribs seem to be starting to yellow a bit. After all this time, I'm going to go on with this - like a gambler not knowing when to get up from the table, possibly. Anyway, for the trial and error bit - I have found that with the blanket covering the sides of the container, but pushed back along the front of it, I am able to maintain the temps and get the humidity to drop. So, all is not lost...
I have also spent the day unravelling the fishnet that I got, and putting it on to my tunnel, to try to give it a little protection from wind, etc. Not an easy task, by yourself - it kept catching on everything. The net was actually 2x as long as the tunnel, but only half as wide. So I made life difficult for myself by doubling it up - kind of side by side - attaching the two side together with baler twine (so that this seam now runs across the top of the tunnel). It now covers the entire thing, and all I have to do is to tie it down to sandbags that I got that go around the perimeter of the tunnel.
I live way out in the middle of nowhere, by myself. People always ask me 'aren't you lonely?' How can anyone have time to be 'lonely' when you have important projects to do, such as this???

One thing about those yellow spots on the leaves. Funnily enough, they are on many of my plants - even ones that are still small, and nowhere near flowering. And they have been on them practically since they went into the tunnel. While I wish that this was a sign of maturing, I'm not sure that it is. It is usually the uppermost leaves that show these spots (the lugs beneath them will still be a dark green). I was wondering if this wasn't some reaction to water droplets or something like that, hitting or sitting on the leaf. I only wish that this was a sign of maturing!!

 

[DGBAMA]

The ends of the transfer hose do not need to be at the same height, the important part is that they both stay submerged.

 

[deluxestogie]

Simple Bob's suggestions:

• With an empty freezer, but closed as you intend for flue-curing, and set to your intended yellowing temp, measure (in inches or centimeters) how much water evaporates from a full Crockpot per day. In all likelihood, a full Crockpot will still have water (even set on "Hi") after 3, 4 or 5 days.
• Ditch the siphon rig. Just add the required initial water to the Crockpot, and have faith.
• Ignore the greenery of the stems. That's what stem kill is for.

Simple Bob

 

[Bex]

Simple (Uncomplicated) Bob's advice to Simple (Dimwitted) Jane. Neat. Kind of like slapping the heck out of someone who is having a hysterical panic attack in front of you.....Thank you! I'm still soldiering on with this 'run', whatever it takes. And when it's over, I will fix my water intake system (that probably caused 90% of this situation), so that the water actually goes into the crockpot instead of all over the freezer floor, and then do the Crockpot/daily evap test. Which, of course, leads me to ANOTHER question (sigh), considering that it appears that my freezer holds the humidity really well, how much water - if any - do I really want in the crockpot? How many days should I want to have water in it - presumably just into wilting, perhaps?? I was probably overly sensitive to minutiae on this run - obsessively adding water when it probably wasn't necessary. Following the 'instructions' like a drone, instead of actually thinking. If the instructions said 95% RH, if it dropped to 93%, I added water. And if the RH didn't come back up in 5 minutes, I added more. Geesh. I made a total balls of this run, frankly. It may take days to get all this humidity out of my freezer. And I also see that, as the nights get colder I'm going to encounter more things that I need to deal with, at least at night. I've got four layers of blankets on the freezer - as a child, I was never tucked in so well - and still the crockpot has difficulty maintaining any kind of temp with anything more than the slightest vent. My humidity dropped about 20% today - if this keeps up, I only have 3 more days to go with this run (only kidding - I want to finish this one ASAP....and, of course, start another). Tomorrow I'm going to crank the temps, hopefully dry the leaves and stems within the next 48 hours or less......Thanks again for the 'simple' advice....

 

[DGBAMA]

Patience Grasshopper, learn to let the leaf dictate the speed of the process and it really is a simple process. You will get it.

 

[Bex]

Patience Grasshopper, learn to let the leaf dictate the speed of the process and it really is a simple process. You will get it.

Ah, Grasshopper has not patience with the current run. Over the course of the day (waking up to still find the RH at 80% after a night tucked in....I have started to hike the temp slowly, about 2C every couple of hours. I find that it is far easier to get the higher temps during the day (duh). I am up to my stem drying now - the RH has dropped to about 30% or less, the temp up to 63C - so halfway up to the stem drying mark. The leaves are already dry, but I will give them a bit longer,. head up to 68C before nightfall, and then turn all off, let the humidity of the closed container be absorbed back into the leaves, and then remove them. I'll then completely dry out the freezer, fix my water intake, and (OMG) start another run tomorrow afternoon with more lugs. At least this way, I will be able to practice on the lugs (and frankly, after a few weeks, the cigs from them are not bad at all) so that by the time my good leaves ripen (wonders will never cease, if they do), I will be able to do this properly, have everything set up as it should be, etc., so that I don't screw this up with my 'best' leaves. That's the plan.....

I know that, frankly, this really IS a simple process. This last run just got a bit confusing due to all the water that I was pumping into the freezer, that never hit the crock pot, so was never evaporating. I suppose due to my inexperience, I attributed the difficulty in dropping RH with something that I was doing, rather than assuming I was doing most things correctly and that there was some outside influence that was disrupting things. Anyway, there were some good lessons for me with this run - I'm not sorry I did it, or sorry that there were problems, as I think I 'advanced' more in the process because of the problems, rather than if everything had just gone smoothly - if that makes any sense....??

 

[deluxestogie]

If there is any residual moisture within the freezer, then you are not yet done. I would consider reducing the vent (closing the chamber more) and holding it at as high a temp (up to 165ºF) as you can maintain for at least a day or two. The point is to get crispy dry stems. If there's residual moisture, then the stems are not ready.

Bob

 

[Bex]

Hmmmm, when I checked this evening, the leaves and stems were brittle and dry - I was able to 'crack' a bit of the midrib off one of the leaves. Hopefully this is ok. I might have been premature about ending this particular run, but, to be honest, I viewed it as an exercise in failure - failure in particular of the water 'supply system' which I think (hope) knocked off everything else - kept the humidity absurdly high, disrupted the control of the thermostat, affected the temp in the chamber, etc. I felt that I had little hope in salvaging this run (conversely, I may have come up with a new, heretofore unknown, tobacco curing method that will soon be all the rage - I have been preparing my patenting material....).
My plan (Oh, dear, here it comes) is to refurbish my water intake system tomorrow morning, and then...yes...harvest some more of the lugs and start again. Kind of like getting back on the horse, right away - I'd like to have this run well behind me.....

 

[Bex]

If there is any residual moisture within the freezer, then you are not yet done. I would consider reducing the vent (closing the chamber more) and holding it at as high a temp (up to 165ºF) as you can maintain for at least a day or two. The point is to get crispy dry stems. If there's residual moisture, then the stems are not ready.

Bob

As usual, you're right. I went out after I read this post (and posted my response) and took a serious look in the chamber - while the tops of the stems where I quickly looked, are dry and crispy, the rest of the midrib isn't. I am continuing on, hiking the temp up to 73C (165F) and let it continue on. I'll check them again tomorrow. In the meantime, I was able to really look at the leaf, as well. What an ugly congregation - mostly brown, and one or two that seem to be as green as the day I picked them.

 

[deluxestogie]

The green leaf is trash, but the brown leaf is good tobacco.

Bob

 

[Bex]

Slowly getting there. This morning, the RH in the freezer had dropped down to about 30%, and is still slowly dropping. Patience is a virtue....sadly.

 

[Bex]

My run is finally finished as of this morning. The leaves are brittle - and most of them are brown - so perhaps all is not lost! But I have learned a ton during this run, which has made it somewhat valuable.
Of course, much of the mishap here was due to the failure of my water intake system, which will be rectified for the next run. But I have also learned - actually what has been said here all along - about how to deal with the RH better.
I notice that during yellowing, my hygrometer often reads 99% - that is as high as the hygro will read - and I would imagine that, while it may be better to have too much rather than too little RH during the yellowing stage, having the RH this high (and who knows what it actually is if the hygro only goes to 99% - or how long it takes to dump all that moisture??) makes it difficult to control and difficult to drop it consistently when the time comes to go into wilting. On my next run, I will keep the RH more consistently around the 95% mark, so that it is more controllable. I also learned (thanks Bob) that without manipulating the vent in the container at all, the RH will drop at some point (even though it is not fast enough for my patience). I think that manipulating the vent also manipulates the RH in the air of the container, but not necessarily the moisture of the leaf - which is why I have been able to get the RH down with the vent open wider, but when the vent is closed more, the RH begins to rise. On my next run, I will keep the vent slightly open and not play with it at all - just raising the temp to the appropriate level and then waiting for the RH to drop before I raise the temp again. So, another lesson learned! When I'm able to handle the leaves in this run, I'll post a photo - funnily enough, at least with a quick glance, they don't look so bad at all!!

 

[DGBAMA]

Good to hear.

And yes, when rh is adjusted, it takes hours for the leaf moisture content to fall to a matching level.

 

[deluxestogie]

If the RH is above 99%, then the temp is at its dew point. At the dew point, water condenses on the surfaces of leaves and freezer walls, then runs down to the bottom. That may be the source of at least some of your pooled water.

Bob

 

[Bex]

Yes, in researching this, I assumed that this was a problem - the 99% RH being the highest they hygrometer can read, so conceivably the RH is 100%. It's raining in my chamber....
I will be more vigilant!!
And now, as promised. my photos:

The Good:


Actually, they look a lot better than the photo - actually 3 leaves are 'brightleaf'. That's about 10% of the leaves. I have been quite successful!!

Now, the Bad:


Not really tremendously 'bad'. Some green spots, but mostly brown.

And, the Ugly:


Some brown intermixed with quite a bit of 'candela wrapper'.

But, all in all, it was a really good learning experience, frankly. And possibly the results were not as horrible as I originally anticipated.

Now, to fix up the water intake, be more vigilant about the RH, and to start again as a good little Grasshopper.....

 

[deluxestogie]

If you re-hydrate the candela, you can give it a try as a wrapper for your smokes.

Bob

 

[Bex]

Funny that you say that - the forum has all you cigar guys showing the cigars that you make, but there is no thread for a newb cigar smoker on how to roll them.....I actually was thinking about trying to use these green leaves as a wrapper, and looked through the forum but couldn't find any basic instructions - just put the tobacco in on one end and start rolling like a burrito?? I will have to research the internet on how cigars are rolled....

 

[deluxestogie]

http://fairtradetobacco.com/forums/98-How-to-roll-cigars

Bob

 

[Bex]

Pah, I've been watching a couple of Cubans doing this over on youtube. First I was reading about using molds, letting it rest in the mold, etc. Eck, the Cuban guys rolled a beauty in about 4 minutes, just using filler, binder, wrapper and spit. I may be able to come up with all those ingredients.....