Hi,
About 6-7 weeks after topping there was still very little yellowing on my Virginia so I picked it anyway and now I have my 1st batch in my Flue curing box at the moment, I put my 1st and 2nd priming's in at 6.30am Saturday my time and advanced the temperature 2-3F per hour up to 100F by around 1am Sunday, I had a peak last night about 8pm Sunday and was feeling quite confident with the progress, All leaves were looking lighter in colour and some had some yellowing maybe 10-15% on those leaves. Today after work I had another peak about 4.30pm, there was almost no change at all in the yellowing and a couple of leaves had few brown spots.
I've been keeping my fan grills pretty much closed but with the fans running and am managing to keep the RH around 85-95%, There hasn't been any condensation (there was some when I left the fans off for about 8 hours because I hadn't installed the grills over the fans yet and the RH had dropped down to 75% so I was trying to raise it back up).
I think another mistake I made was I washed my leaves and didn't allow them to dry before putting them in to cure, I did run the fans on full(With no grill so just wide open) at the start till they looked mostly dry.
I'm using 2 x Slow Cookers filled with water for heat/humidity, 1 x fan on each wall of the box about 1.5inches off the floor, 2 x fans on the roof which are switched separately and I've not had on yet. Its a sort of copy of a up draft barn thats about 3.2x3.2x3.2 feet. I've hang the leaves all on the same level in the box, 4 x strings of leaves about 12 leaves per string with space around each leaf for air to move.
I would take a picture but I don't want to open the box again for a while and its dark now. Also, Can anyone tell me how wilted you want the tobacco to look before moving onto the leaf drying stage ?
Thank you for your help, Sorry for the wall of text I was trying to be as detailed as possible.
Regards,
Sam.
About 6-7 weeks after topping there was still very little yellowing on my Virginia so I picked it anyway and now I have my 1st batch in my Flue curing box at the moment, I put my 1st and 2nd priming's in at 6.30am Saturday my time and advanced the temperature 2-3F per hour up to 100F by around 1am Sunday, I had a peak last night about 8pm Sunday and was feeling quite confident with the progress, All leaves were looking lighter in colour and some had some yellowing maybe 10-15% on those leaves. Today after work I had another peak about 4.30pm, there was almost no change at all in the yellowing and a couple of leaves had few brown spots.
I've been keeping my fan grills pretty much closed but with the fans running and am managing to keep the RH around 85-95%, There hasn't been any condensation (there was some when I left the fans off for about 8 hours because I hadn't installed the grills over the fans yet and the RH had dropped down to 75% so I was trying to raise it back up).
I think another mistake I made was I washed my leaves and didn't allow them to dry before putting them in to cure, I did run the fans on full(With no grill so just wide open) at the start till they looked mostly dry.
I'm using 2 x Slow Cookers filled with water for heat/humidity, 1 x fan on each wall of the box about 1.5inches off the floor, 2 x fans on the roof which are switched separately and I've not had on yet. Its a sort of copy of a up draft barn thats about 3.2x3.2x3.2 feet. I've hang the leaves all on the same level in the box, 4 x strings of leaves about 12 leaves per string with space around each leaf for air to move.
I would take a picture but I don't want to open the box again for a while and its dark now. Also, Can anyone tell me how wilted you want the tobacco to look before moving onto the leaf drying stage ?
Thank you for your help, Sorry for the wall of text I was trying to be as detailed as possible.
Regards,
Sam.