Long overdue for an update. Lots of good and bad things for my 2014 grow, but more good than bad. I've been traveling constantly for work for the last 10 weeks, sometimes getting home well after midnight Friday and leaving again on Sunday. Which was a problem for keeping up with the weeds and, lately, harvesting and curing. Luckily we haven't had a frost and have had a nice warm, dry fall. Which is huge because I couldn't put the plants I the ground until late June since that's when we moved to the new place. So I still haven't primed more than 1/3 of my leaves. But I'll be home on Wednesday night so I'll pick the rest this week. But if the weather holds out I should get seed, too, which I didn't expect.
The big change from my old place is the curing space. I used to cure in an unattached garage, which would start getting cold at night around now, but the variation in humidity kept the leaves from drying green, and I also used the pile color curing method, but the stems took a long time to dry. Our new place has a large dry basement (a great thing to have in general, esp. in New England!) But for the first priming I had some green drying. I wasn't home long enough to pile color cure for that batch. I then opened some windows in the basement to bring in more humidity and cooler air. The nice thing is once everything's color cured, I can dry the stems quickly- there's even a wood stove in the basement.
The only other negatives: the plants are only half as tall as they would be if I got them in the ground a month early, but I have a lot of plants, so that should be OK. Next year I'm going to find a spot with more sun and let my wife grow vegetables in the existing plot.
On the plus side, hardly any pests! Only one application or Thuricide all season.
