Tobacco Growing

[glenn57]

you should think about getting into the cannabis market next year........rumor has it it grows good in the lakeiwannabethere area!!!!!!!!

  Geeze you keep making pot growing references in my tobacco thread. Pot growing should be a thread all by itself, I am sure it will be done in MN by Union growers 

I said cannabis, hemp no mention of that illegal substance!!!!!!!!! and I was merely pointing out an opportunity for a cash crop option!!!!!

[Bobby Bass]

  All good Glenn

[glenn57]

 

[DDSBYDAY]

  This is a great tutorial.  Very informative.  Two years ago I would not have even known it was possible to grow tobacco in Northern Minnesota.  It looks to me like the plants are growing to their potential.   

[Bobby Bass]

Well now that we have shown how to grow tobacco and gave you an idea on how to dry it I guess it is time to show you how to make cigarettes. Half of the tobacco leaf that I grew this year will be used in making pipe tobacco which is used for rolling your own home grown cigarettes. The rest of the leaf I will be rolling my own cigars but that is a much longer process curing the leaf. The leaf for cigarettes can be smoked by some as soon as it dry and is color cured. I have some leaf here that has been drying for about six weeks and is dry enough to be smoked by itself but is better if it is mixed in with some store bought pipe tobacco.

A typical cigarette mix is 50/50 Barley and Virginia here are two leafs ready to be processed.



First thing we do is remove the main stem, the old school way of doing this is to grab the leaf by the tip and pull the stem out a couple of inches then holding the leaf wrap the stem around your hand and it peels right out, the leafs look like this with the stems now removed.



Next we need to shred the leaf, you can buy a cigarette shredder or if you have lots of time on your hands you can cut the leaf with a scissors. I prefer to borrow the wife's pasta maker and send the leaf through the fettuccine cutters a few times. (Tip here when you do your shredding the leaf should be a little crispy, if it is limp the leaf will get caught up in the cutter and you will find yourself spending a lot of time cleaning the pasta cutter up so it is useable by the wife again)



The leaf should look something like this, you have to practice as to how many times through the shredder you send the leaf. If you shred the leaf to small it is hard to make ciggs with a machine and if not shredded enough it will not interweave with itself and hold a fire in your finish cigarette.



If you did this right you will have a few more tests to see if it all came together. One is the burn test, if you lite the cigarette and it stays lit it is dry enough. When you tap the end of the ash of and the cig stays lit then you have passed the proper amount of shredding. Taste test is next and the longer you let the leaf age the better the smoke will be. If it is harsh then it needs to sit and dry longer. Now that you have done all of this you can play with your mix 50/50 or 75/25 or just use the leaf you grew to extend your store bought pipe tobacco. A good starting point is a large handful to a store bought bag if you are mixing.




My leaf for cigars is hanging in the greenhouse getting a lot of humidity and heat. I expect it will be boxed up here in a couple of months and put away to cure before I can start rolling some cigars from it. It looks like I will be growing more tobacco next season. Already planning on growing some different cigar leaf to experiment with.

[Bobby Bass]

I forgot to add that 50/50 Virginia and Burley is a common blend for making cigarettes that you can also add in some Turkish leaf which turns the blend into a mix that taste a lot like a camel. My son smokes Camels and our local tobacco shop sells leaf by the ounce. When you are shredding leaf one at a time this lets you play with combo with out wasting a lot of leaf. I have been using the Small Black Mammoth that I grew last year with some store bought Lemon leaf for a real decent pipe tobacco mix as an example.

[Bobby Bass]

December update:

Has been awhile since I updated this thread so I took a few pictures to get you up to date. The first one here is off a HAND of tobacco. This is a way of storing your tobacco and making it easier to handle. I take 10-15 leaves when they are moist enough to handle with out crumbling and lay them out on a table. I then smooth them out by hand and stack them on top of each other. A smaller leaf of the same tobacco is then wrapped around the top of the stems. This holds the HAND together. I throw a rubber band around the top of the hand and add a small tag to tell me when I made the hand and what it is. The hands are then stored in plastic totes that have a seal on the lid. I keep track of the humidity inside the totes and try to keep it as close as I can to the magic 70/70  Temperature and Humidity.



Here is a picture of several hands from a tub of Virginia Tobacco which will be used I hope in a few more months for pipe tobacco / cigarette.




I check the tubs once a week and they are very strong smelling as they cure. I expect the Connecticut and Dominican will take more then a year before I can start playing with them for cigars. The Burley and Virginia colored cured quite nicely and the Connecticut leaf is a light shade of brown. The Dominican leaf is either very dark or still green turning slowly.






I still have some more leaf out in the greenhouse that I am letting age out there and I did take about a dozen plants that still had a lot of leaf on them and nailed them upside down in the boat house. I am waiting to see If they will dry out over the winter. So the leaf has now been drying for about four months and we will check back and let you know how it is going. The Small Black Mammoth leaf that I grew last year is almost gone as I have been shredding it up and mixing it with pipe tobacco. Everyone who taste it says it smells like a cigar so I may grow some more of it next season.