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'Second Growth' Leaves

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Orson Carte

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Around five weeks ago I cut a whole row (fifty Virginia plants, quarter of the crop) off at the base and harvested the leaves from the cut stalks.(I am in the southern hemisphere, NZ, and we are in early autumn).To my surprise (although I know that many of the plant kingdom will do this - I just wasn't aware that tobacco did) the 'stumps' left in the ground sprouted large healthy-looking leaves, every bit as large as the originals.I have harvested all of these now and hung-up in the barn. Being a complete neophyte, I have no idea whether or not there is enough heat in the air to colour them. But, we will see. I live in a very temperate climate with very few frosts.I'm very interested to hear from any of the group as to whether these second-growth leaves will be worth processing. I did notice, when picking them that they were nowhere near as 'sticky' as the main crop. Is it possible they aren't 'ripe' enough?Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 

DGBAMA

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You have what we call a "sucker crop". The are a number of threads on the topic. It seems to be an individual thing, YMMV, some have success others do not. Some varieties regrow better than others. Try it and see.
 

Smokin Harley

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Around five weeks ago I cut a whole row (fifty Virginia plants, quarter of the crop) off at the base and harvested the leaves from the cut stalks.(I am in the southern hemisphere, NZ, and we are in early autumn).To my surprise (although I know that many of the plant kingdom will do this - I just wasn't aware that tobacco did) the 'stumps' left in the ground sprouted large healthy-looking leaves, every bit as large as the originals.I have harvested all of these now and hung-up in the barn. Being a complete neophyte, I have no idea whether or not there is enough heat in the air to colour them. But, we will see. I live in a very temperate climate with very few frosts.I'm very interested to hear from any of the group as to whether these second-growth leaves will be worth processing. I did notice, when picking them that they were nowhere near as 'sticky' as the main crop. Is it possible they aren't 'ripe' enough?Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I had that happen last year. Mostly the Virginia Gold and Little Dutch but some of the Vuelta Abajo and Criollo 98 . We had a wet windy start and some of the plants that got bent over in the soil ended up suckering and I ended up letting most of it grow ...the sucker plants leaves grew to equal to or bigger than the original plant. So in a sense I got lucky and inadvertantly grew almost a double crop .
 
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