Charly,
Here is a document regarding dark air-cured tobacco management. I hope it is of some use to you.
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/agr/agr153/agr153.pdf
I use to stalk curing some of each variant I growing, curing some leaf by leaf and some bucket. The funny thing is that I feel that some variants curing best one stalk and other in buckets, Semois did it better on stalk then in bucket for example and that surprised me a little bit. and I read about different types of flue cured tobacco, Don't remember if it was a PDF from "Oxford Research station" or some other file, but it was explain that they created tobacco variants so some was better curing one stalk and other primed (leaf by leaf). So my point with this is test different methods and find a method and a variant that make the best results for you.That's something I thought too, but in the same time, it might increase humidity and increase mold risks... Stalk curing might be a good idea in dry regions.That leads to another question (sorry again DubHelix ) : is there a benefit to have darker colors (while air curing) ?Last year, the leaves which ended darker than the others (after air curing) were not great (cherry red and semois leaves)The darker shade might be more appealing, but the taste was not better at all... do you think some strains are better when cured to darker color ?
Photobucket required an account upgrade to continue using their service to post photos on forums such as this...so I figured I'd go ahead and pony up what was sure to be a nominal fee....then I saw that they want $400!!!
Great !
I love the picture of the leaves in the basket
These leaves are Rot Front ?
Did you already topped your plants ?