Well it's been awhile and what a story I have to tell.
First, my last post on here was posted 2-3 days before I started developing symptoms of giardia (AKA beaver fever) it knock me down for 4 weeks at a time when I really couldn't afford the time to be sick. by the middle of september I started feeling better but it was also a long road to recovery.
Despite the sickness, I managed to catch up on beekeeping and tobacco work. It ended up being a extremely late last harvest and some of the leaves still aren't fully cured as I write this but I'm processing them now anyway because I can't wait on the few leaves that are only partly cured, they'll get mixed in with the other baccy and make no difference. right now I'm deribbing the tobacco and I have the shredder on standby ready to shred. then a light roasting and then I'll put on my marlboro recipe casing and call it a year.
I'm rather impressed with the size the plants got this year and the leaf size was what I was hoping for. I will say it was a successful "size matters" year this year although one row kind of got stunted. I manage to bag seed from 4 maryland varieties, gold leaf oronico, and certain type of oriental. Most of the biggest leaf came from the marylands while the greatest number of leaves came from the africam red and lemon bright.
A rather large leaf. I can't remember the variety this one is but probably a maryland.
Maryland leaves. many of them got up to over 3' in length.
A izmir leaf. I got a good large size leaf on all the orientals as well.
The delay in my posting also has to do with that I had access to the computer blocked of with bee equipment. hopefully I'll post more next year. Speaking of next year, I might end up renting a 50' x 50' section from a freind for next years grow, we'll have to see what i can work out for that. the wife is going to be non-negotiable about not have grass planted in our yard next year. how ever it's going to work, I think i'll do a standard spacing as per commercial farmers. something like 20 rows with 30 per row for 600 plants.
So all in all, even though it was a late year with set backs, I still managed 12kg of cured tobacco.