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days to maturity

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LeftyRighty

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I think I know the the answer to this question, but asking anyway.
I have a few strains of tobacco, that when seed starting, I had an initially very poor germination, only about half as many plants as wanted. So, I started a second batch of seeds, about 2+ weeks later, and got the remaining plants that I wanted.
By the time it came to put them into the ground (and it was a late spring), both sets of starts appeared pretty much the same - same height, leaf size, etc. Really could not distinguish between the early/late starts.

These plants are maturing, half are in full bloom, the other half just now showing buds - a couple feet shorter and at least a couple weeks from blooming. This is happening to both burley and bright leaf strains.

I had the assumption that "days to maturity" started on ground planting time. Apparently, it is seed germination time. Correct ???

In the future, if I re-start more seed, I'll know to mark or isolate these. I hate the mixed appearance of these in the garden. Looks like I got different strains in the same row.
 

LeftyRighty

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Maybe it's just the cold, cloudy, wet spring we had.
But, the only strains I have that are showing this characteristic, half maturing differently, are the ones that had significant different seed starting times.
 

SmokesAhoy

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Alligator texture in the leaf for mature, but many choose to harvest earlier for personal taste reasons
 

LeftyRighty

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No, I did not seperate the early seed from late seed plants - just mixed as I planted. But the difference in early/late bloom is the same. And, yes, stress may be a factor also - been a wierd spring and early summer.
I also have some turkish strains, early/late seeded, doing the same thing. But they're also probably stressed because I planted them the last week of April, dug them up for an early May snow storm, and re-planted after the snow melted.

My YTB bloomed last week, plants all uniform, as seeded all at the same time. Nice big leaf, but the plants are only 2+ feet tall, 14-16 big leaves, short, squatty plants. Over 6-7 ft tall last year. This has really been a wierd growing season.
 

deluxestogie

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Days to maturity are measured (arbitrarily) by ARS-GRIN as the number of days between transplant and 50% of the plants with at least one open blossom. Since the ARS-GRIN maturity values are mostly fiction, they are useful only as a wild guess. Keep your own notes for the real numbers.

Bob
 

DGBAMA

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My VA Gold seeds were set in germination tray the same time as all the others but sprouted sporatically over a several week period. They were neglected until there were enough of them to fill a 36 cell tray, after all the others had been moved from cell trays to individual cups. they were never transplanted to cups; straight from the cell tray to the ground; and a week later than the cup planted starts at that. Watching them; the later planted Virginia are getting going I am starting to suspect that they will overtake and out produce the other varieties which had "better" care. Strange.
 
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