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Squeezyjohn's grow blog 2015

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squeezyjohn

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I've been keeping on top of removing the suckers and the plants are beginning to show buds at the top too on all 3 varieties. All 3 varieties have put on impressive growth in the past week or so.

I'm a bit concerned about my Bamboo Shoot plants though - I've never grown such large healthy looking bright leaf before - but in the last few days the lower leaves have begun to yellow very quickly and some are showing dead (brown) patches too. From my experience of growing here it's very early indeed for the leaf to be becoming ripe. It has been very hot and dry - but these last couple of days have been much colder and rainy ... could that trigger something like this? Or is Bamboo Shoot just a variety that ripens quite early?

I'd be very grateful if anyone knows!
 

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I think you are describing "lug leaves" the bottom few that only get about half the size of the ones above them. If so, yes, mine yellow and die off early. No worries I think, but a pic would help.
 

squeezyjohn

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I wouldn't call them the lugs ... they're full sized leaves - but they are the ones on the lower half of the plant. I'll try to get out to them to get a picture to show you.
 

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Excellent grow blog, Squeezy. I am going to look into getting some of those root trainers for next year. I looks like a real good setup for starting seedlings and nursing young plants.

I wish we had a similar system to your garden allotments here in the U.S. I see all sorts of unused land that could be put to good use growing crops of all types, if only one were allowed to cultivate it.
 

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#2 looking almost like my "Orinoco" one the picture.. I will follow your grow as much as possible..
 

squeezyjohn

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Thanks Shundahai ;)

The allotment system in the UK is a really fantastic tradition going back hundreds of years - unfortunately a lot of the council run sites are under threat of being built on by the local authorities - but the laws protecting them are still quite strong.

I don't know about the U.S. but when I was in Vancouver a few years back they had some amazing bits of inner city wasteland that had been transformed in to what they called 'community gardens' - fantastically diverse jungles of green edibles and flowers where you would least expect to find them ... I asked them how this came to be and they said that the first people had just planted the spaces up with stuff without asking, expecting it to all get removed by the landowners at some point - but the area was so improved by it that it grew and they were allowed to keep using it!

If there isn't anything official like that near you ... I can heartily recommend the book 'Guerilla Gardening' ;-)
 

Shundahai

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In the condo complex where I live, there is about 3/4 acre of unused field that would be perfect for a large community garden. At one point, before I lived here, they actually tried doing that. But, like many such endeavors, a small handful of people ended up doing all the work with everyone else demanding the fruits of the project. From what I hear, it devolved into a huge lot of bickering and the experiment lasted a couple of years before they stopped it. I've brought it up to the Stalinist homeowners assoc. a couple of times, but they aren't willing to allow it.

"Guerrilla Farming" is actually quite prevalent here in N. California with the illicit marijuana trade, but they tend to be in remote areas close to sources of water that can be tapped for irrigation. Bastards cause alot of environmental issues with their grows too. The water thing would be a major problem for guerrilla growing here....irrigation is an absolute requirement due to our climate (no rain to speak of during the growing season and temps of 90 degrees and up. Even with 50" of annual rainfall, a good chunk of the year is near desert-like.). Tapping creeks isn't really a great idea, most in this area are sensitive spawning habitat for salmon and steelhead and they are also closely monitored by the DF&W for that reason. Major bad getting caught screwing around with sensitive watersheds here. That would mean trucking water in to wherever you are growing, which is something I really don't have the time or inclination to do.

Thanks Shundahai ;)

The allotment system in the UK is a really fantastic tradition going back hundreds of years - unfortunately a lot of the council run sites are under threat of being built on by the local authorities - but the laws protecting them are still quite strong.

I don't know about the U.S. but when I was in Vancouver a few years back they had some amazing bits of inner city wasteland that had been transformed in to what they called 'community gardens' - fantastically diverse jungles of green edibles and flowers where you would least expect to find them ... I asked them how this came to be and they said that the first people had just planted the spaces up with stuff without asking, expecting it to all get removed by the landowners at some point - but the area was so improved by it that it grew and they were allowed to keep using it!

If there isn't anything official like that near you ... I can heartily recommend the book 'Guerilla Gardening' ;-)
 

ProfessorPangloss

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Thanks Shundahai ;)

The allotment system in the UK is a really fantastic tradition going back hundreds of years - unfortunately a lot of the council run sites are under threat of being built on by the local authorities - but the laws protecting them are still quite strong.

I don't know about the U.S. but when I was in Vancouver a few years back they had some amazing bits of inner city wasteland that had been transformed in to what they called 'community gardens' - fantastically diverse jungles of green edibles and flowers where you would least expect to find them ... I asked them how this came to be and they said that the first people had just planted the spaces up with stuff without asking, expecting it to all get removed by the landowners at some point - but the area was so improved by it that it grew and they were allowed to keep using it!

If there isn't anything official like that near you ... I can heartily recommend the book 'Guerilla Gardening' ;-)

Im growing my 28 plants on a vacant lot very close to my house. Guerrilla gardening is pretty big here in the states. Google the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, and Ron Finley in Los Angeles. I'm considering starting a nonprofit here in town to convert useless green space (of which we have a lot - people are just horrible at maintaining homes here and they get torn down). I mentioned it to someone at the city and they said they could/would gladly put it under their downtown development authority so I could skip all the paperwork but still be my own organization. More sotweed! More tomatoes! More kale!

But in general, we do a piss-poor job of land management in the US. Lots of space that could be productively and comfortably either rural or urban is now neither (suburban) and low-density sprawl (grown of scared white people, cheap gasoline, and the building industry) has brought with it major problems, between declining farmland, cultural segregation, deflation of home values, blight, environmental degradation, infrastructure stress, take your pick. The examples I cited above are people who are actively making it better, but they are the exception and not the rule.
 
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squeezyjohn

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I get you, with the problems of too much rainfall and normally low temperatures that we suffer here in the UK summer (with the occasional heatwave that makes us go crazy because we're not used to it!) for most crops it's hard for us to imagine the desert-like conditions you speak of!

The rules of most allotment organisations are very simple ... you pay your small (not for profit) fee and you get a plot. The plot's yours as long as you want it PROVIDED you keep it well and do all the work needed to keep it in check including all your fences, borders, keeping the weeds down and not using it for inappropriate uses. Once or twice a year - the committee check all the plots and issue warnings to people who aren't putting the work in and if you ignore the warning - the next year they give it to someone on the waiting list! Of course this only works if there are enough people wanting a plot! In cities here - there are 3 year waiting lists ... but not on my plot ... we're under-subscribed which is why I garden next door to 6ft of weeds showering my plot with seeds and sheltering a very destructive rabbit warren! It's not all easy going.
 

squeezyjohn

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Having said all that ... tobacco seems to love growing here far more than you'd imagine with such a short growing season which in a bad year can only go from early June to early October but in a good year can be from early May until November! It's a very changeable climate - hence the british stereotype of always talking about the weather!

The downfall is with air curing the tobacco here ... the high humidity and quickly cooling temps in the autumn leaves us with a very short window for curing the leaf we grow before mould issues set in.
 

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We have a long growing season here, in the neighborhood of 240 days or more without frost, and in normal years 45 to 50" of rainfall annually. I've set my tomatoes out in the ground as early as the first week in March, though that is pushing it a bit. The timing of the rain is a big issue though, the wet season normally runs from about November through mid March, with virtually none the rest of the year. We can get small shower or two in early summer, but if they total more than 1/2", i haven't seen it.

The Professor is correct about our careless utilization of the land here in the U.S. It would be great if we could get our city councils here to work so easily with us to get land to grow on, but unfortunately I reside in one of the mostly highly regulated areas of the most highly regulated state in the country, and trying to get anything through the massive bureaucracy that attempts to control every aspect of life here is generally an exercise in futility. The county supes and the city council here don't do ANYTHING but with an eye towards revenue....if your idea won't add to the coffers....well, you can go stuff it.
 

squeezyjohn

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I know - I know - I'm being very lax with the grow blog this year ... sorry everyone!

Here's the story so far:

of the 4 varieties of N.Tabacum I sowed only 3 varieties made it to planting out stage due to space restrictions on my allotment so I ended up with plants of Bolivian Criollo Black, Bamboo Shoot and Amarellinha from the GRIN seeds I was sent. Of those only BCB has been a real winner - I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that my soil and growing conditions here in the UK do not make for very successful bright leaf type tobaccos - both the Amarellinha and Bamboo shoot plants failed to make any leaf of a decent size and something caused them to yellow and die back very early in the season (and not in the correct order from bottom to top!) - anyhow I have been picking and hanging these small leaves with the hope of a little crop to do something with but I am unsure as to how ripe the leaves were when they began dying back! Bolivian Criollo Black on the other hand has been almost as spectacular as the Silver River was last year making huge vigorous plants that look as healthy as anything!

Bolivian Criollo Black.jpg
The lower leaves are beginning to ripen up and will be ready for picking very soon.

My N.Rustica grow this year was inspired by dear old PO Green's spectacular grow last year and of the 4 varieties I sowed - only 2 made it to the field - Mahorka Stalingradskaia and 1000 year old tobacco - in the hope that I could get gigantic leaves with a little bit of TLC! These were planted out a little later than the tabacums and with a judicious mix of ammonium nitrate as a top dressing - the occasional watering with my own special yellow liquid fertilizer :eek: and some well rotted farmyard manure dug in before planting they have certainly performed!

Here's The Stalingradskaia with my hand as a measure for the size of leaf:
Rustica Mahorka Stalingradskaia.jpg

And the 1000 year old tobacco:
Rustica 1000 year old tobacco.jpg

As you can see - they're getting close to the sizes that PO Green was getting and I have certainly neglected them a bit more than he did! The varieties are certainly ones with larger leaves! The 1000 year old tobacco has a typically thick rubbery leaf like most rusticas do but the Stalingradskaia has a finer texture much more like a N.Tabacum variety.

So I would call that a success so far. Of course it's just coming up to harvest time and it's only half the job finished ... so my shed is ready to be filled with leaves ... the grape vine is just beginning to fruit too so it will look very pretty with grapes and leaves hanging everywhere!

Shed with grapes.jpg
 

deluxestogie

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That is an interesting observation about the nature of the leaf of Stalingradskaia. It's also a lighter color. Your final impressions, when all is said and smoked, should be informative.

Bob
 

squeezyjohn

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I thought the same. I will be air curing this batch as a twist mainly for chewing tobacco but I will leave one uncased as a tester to have a little smoke in a pipe to see and let you know what it's like.

The problem I always have with the rustica varieties is that I never have any idea when to harvest them - they stay green and healthy until the frosts get them if I leave them - no signs of ripeness that you get with regular tobacco. Does anyone know what signs to look for? I would like to make best use of my optimum curing time if I can - as soon as Mid-October hits here it becomes too wet to air-cure anything in my set-up.
 

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Istanbulin recommended Mahorka #6 Yellow 109. He said he likes it better than other Rusticas because it yellows on the plant and is easy to cure. I grew some last year along with Isleta Pueblo for seed but I didn't harvest any leaf because I had too many varieties and couldn't stay ahead of the suckers on the Rustica. I did save the seed.
 

squeezyjohn

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That's very interesting Knucks thanks. The suckers are a complete pain ... they can grow 4 inches long in a couple of days if it's been raining! In fact I had one spring up from the bottom of a plant and it was so vigorous that it tore a hole straight through one of my leaves and kept on growing skywards! Rustica really does not like being kept in check.
 

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I just waded through my grow log from 2012, the year I grew Sacred Cornplanter. I seem to have started harvesting (priming) the N. rustica leaf 4 weeks after the blossoms first opened. Here is a photo of the leaf condition:

Garden20120804_436_Cornplanter_leafSize_300.jpg


I have no idea if this was a propitious time to prime, since the leaf required about 2 years to color cure.

Bob
 

squeezyjohn

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Thanks for the info Bob - I fear that most rustica can take a very long time to colour cure properly no matter what time it is harvested (from my own observations)!

However - last year I tried pile curing for a week to start with and found it really helped with getting the green out of the leaves. The same way it is normally done re-stacking the leaves every day for a week in a warm place before hanging gives a kind of yellowing (more like light-green-ing with rustica) that you don't get if you simply hang them straight away.
 

squeezyjohn

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Well I'm well in to harvesting and hanging leaf here. Half of my bamboo shoot and amarellinha is already fully colour cured and dried - the Bolivian Criollo Black is in the middle of being primed and all of my gigantic rustica has been strung up too.

One note on the two different rusticas I planted (stalingradskaia and 1000 year old tobacco) - I noted that the texture of the stalingradskaia was more silky than the regular rubbery rustica when growing - but it did thicken up much more as it ripened. However while stringing up I definitely noticed a different smell between the varieties. The 1000 year old tobacco had the same smell as every rustica I have ever grown (a bit like wet dogs! yuck!) - however the stalingradskaia had an altogether more fruity smell to it - a bit like blackcurrant.
 

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Is that the Mahorka #11 Stalingradskaia? I got some of those seed from Madhouse but haven't grown it yet. He said that's the variety Stalin used for cigarettes.
Glad to hear harvest is coming along. How the weather?
 
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