I have thought about it for a while and now decided to try to grow my own tobacco. I am only talking like 5 plants or so to start because I want to practice and experiment on what works best. I found a site online that you can order many different varieties of seeds depending on what your growing for (cigarettes, cigars, or snuff). The seeds are inexpensive and growing the plants seems easy enough so I think I will try it. Anyone else done this before or thought about it? I will attempt to make some nasal snuff when I am done. Ought to be interesting.
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Stumbled upon this myself today. Seem like an exhaustive resource. Good luck, let us know how it goes. http://www.howtogrowtobacco.com/
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@thorgrimnr has provided the key link. There’s a lot of knowledge there, even if most of it is tailored to cigarette production. I’ve been growing and producing snuff for nearly 3 years now. It’s definitely possible, and worth the effort. 4 plants is challenging, just because you have so much effort invested in so few plants. There’s just so many things that can go wrong, and it’s heart breaking when something goes wrong with only 4 plants. Having done this for 3 years now, I think 10-15 plants is about the sweet spot for a home snuff grower. 2 years ago (2011) I only produced 4 plants, and wish I had done more. In my experience, it takes about 1 plant to make about ~100g of snuff. This means that you’ll yield at best a couple hundred grams of snuff, assuming that you get good germination, no insects, no mold, good curing, etc, etc. Because the whole process (seed to product) takes about 18-24 months, there are a lot of opportunities for failure. My first season (2010), I grew about 10 plants and lost 50% to mold during my curing. Even with 12 plants, you probably won’t be able to cover your yearly usage, but you can surely supplement it with a very custom snuff. I grow in 22" pots and if you have a good well-sunned spot to put a dozen 22" pots you can do very well. From what I’ve read, they do even better in the ground. That said, 5 plants is a good start, just to go through the motions and start to learn the various stages of tobacco production. It’s not really that hard, but like I said before, it’s easy to really mess up a plant or 2, and it’s not that much more difficult to do 10 plants instead of 4. I am doing about 14 plants this season, and am really looking forward to a great growing season. I have 10 plants currently curing from last season that are just about to get boxed for future snuff production. and 72 babies are currently in a seed starting tray, ready to go outside tomorrow. If you haven’t been germinating for a month already, you may already be too late for this year. But nothing wrong with starting now. It will only make the germination period more familiar for next year. Depending on where you live, my dates may be a bit off, I’m on the east coast, in NJ. Depending on where you live, you might still be able to pull off a crop this season. Most varieties need 60-90 days of grow season. Good luck!
@thorgrimnr @puffpuff thanks guys for the insight, I am probably going to grow them at a relative’s house, they just moved out to some private land in the “country” so to speak. I think it will be a good spot as far as sunlight and pollution but insects will be a problem I’m sure. The best thing about the location is the space, enough for 100 plants easily if I wanted to try that many. I’ll post updates along the way, though I haven’t ordered the seeds yet.
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Looking forward to see how this turns out for you md363.
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Still waiting to plant out my seedlings of “Rotterdammer Bestgoed”. Due to the bad spring, this week we still had frost during the night. But hope for the comming week. Jaap Bes.
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starting, the soil needs to be pretty warm before you set out your seedlings. If you can burn brush on the planting site, all the better; tobacco loves wood ash and the burn will warm the soil. Good luck. I was browsing a Dominican cigar site last year and was astonished with how many times they sprayed the curing leaf with fungicide. Yuck.
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