Are these ready for the garden?

[mwaller]

My first harvest - Little Dutch mud lugs - appear to be curing well in my sophisticated curing chamber (AKA garage).

I'm attempting to elevate the humidity of the garage with a "whole house" evaporative humidifier. This has been relatively successful at maintaining humidity between 65% and 69%

 

[deluxestogie]

While tobacco won't mold easily at 70% RH, other stuff in your garage might.

I would rank tobacco leaf somewhere between cheese and wood on the chart.

Bob

 

[mwaller]

Did my 1st major priming of Corojo 99, Little Dutch, and Florida Sumatra last night! There are two full wires of leaves hanging now. The wire hidden behind the one shown is all Corojo 99. The wire shown is a mix - Florida Sumatra on the left, Little Dutch in the middle, and Corojo 99 on the right.

 

[deluxestogie]

Woe unto him that lay leaf to leaf, that lay variety to variety, til there be no string of a single variety left in the midst of the earth. [With apologies to Isaiah.]

A mixed string means mixed up stuff. Remedy that while you can. The leaf looks nice.

Bob

 

[mwaller]

Woe unto him that lay leaf to leaf, that lay variety to variety, til there be no string of a single variety left in the midst of the earth. [With apologies to Isaiah.]

A mixed string means mixed up stuff. Remedy that while you can. The leaf looks nice.

Bob

I will be bringing home some mylar tonight

 

[mwaller]

So, my first priming included the bottom 2 - 5 leaves of each plant. Some were thin mud lugs, but others were large succulent leaves. Would this all be considered "volado," or is this a mix of "volado" and "seco?"

 

[deluxestogie]

Am I a man, or am I a Muppet? If I'm a Muppet, then I'm a very manly Muppet.

The bottom 2 to 4 leaves are usually fliers and trash, and may be considered volado. Above that, and half-way up the stalk, is lugs, which are usually labeled seco in Spanish. The top 2 to 4 leaves are tips or corona. Every thing between lugs and tips is called "leaf", and can be divided into viso and ligero.

For several years, I carefully labeled my primed tobacco by stalk position. With experience, you can immediately recognize the general stalk position of an individual leaf from a bag containing all the leaf of two or more stalks. Now, if I prime leaf, I label it string "bottom", "mid", "upper" or "tip". For stalk-harvested leaf, I label it "stalk", and never bother to sort it. When it comes time to roll a cigar, I just select the leaf that looks right for each role.

Bob

 

[SmokesAhoy]

I divide leaf into upper and lower, like Bob says within that you can easily see the difference even after kilning. I let mine mature a little longer than most I think and find the flavor of "volado" becomes more like an upper which makes me happy as I don't like the flavor of the low leaf. I allow the bottom most leaf to die towards the end in lieu of harvesting it. Sometimes I'll roll a cigar of field cured leaf but otherwise don't really do anything with it.

I top to the highest acceptably sized leaf, if it's too small to mess with I don't bother but I've read Bob has had great success with extra kilning the tips.

 

[mwaller]

Some of my leaves are yellowing nicely, but a number of the small and midsize Corojo 99 leaves may be drying green. The leaves in the middle of the picture are starting to feel papery, and the tips are crispy on a few.
What am I doing wrong? Humidity is 65-70 with the humidifier going full blast ???

 

[Alpine]

You may have harvested them too early... wait for at least a slight yellowing at the tips before picking... If you are a cigarette smoker like me, wait for 75% yellow (ripe, not mature).

pier

 

[mwaller]

You may have harvested them too early... wait for at least a slight yellowing at the tips before picking... If you are a cigarette smoker like me, wait for 75% yellow (ripe, not mature).

Thanks, Alpine. These leaves are for cigars, but your intuition may be correct. Many of the leaves looked mature, but were not necessarily yellowing on the plant...

 

[mwaller]

Another thought I had was that many of the leaves were from low stalk position and were quite thin. Are these 'flyers and trash' typically more difficult to cure properly?

 

[Alpine]

In my experience, lower leaves are the easiest to cure, sometimes they cure right on the plant! Deluxestogie refers to them as "mud cured", I only harvested them my very first year of growing in order to experiment with various curing arrangements and techniques, but it was a worthless experience since mid lugs tend to cure much easily than proper leaves. My advice is: give your leaves plenty of time to get ripe, we have another couple of months of growing season, just be patient! Tipically leaves begin to mature one or more weeks after topping, depending on strain and weather condition, when did you top your plants?

pier

 

[mwaller]

All plants were topped 1-2 weeks ago.

 

[Alpine]

Then they are about to mature... look for (depending on the strain):
yellowing at the tips or
tips and edges curled or
"alligatoring" of the surface or
lighter green than other leaves
when leaves are mature the stem breaks like a fresh stick of celery, the noise is quite audible. I let my leaves wilt in pile in the sun for a couple of hours, then hang them individually back to back and front to front. I found some strains are extremely easy to air cure, while others are not despite all my efforts ( this is due to my limited experience for sure). Moreover some strains show obvious signs of maturity (or ripeness) while others require all my attention just to suspect they are ready for harvest. In one case (Celikhan untopped and not even pruned) the leaves obstinately refused to show signs of maturity, this led me to harvest too late and I ended with leaves curing deep brown (almost black, to be honest) instead of the beautiful pale yellow/gold I was tending to. It smokes ok, but I suspect the taste is definitely not that of a Celikhan properly (sun) cured.
Hope this helps

Pier

 

[mwaller]

I will continue to wait and monitor. I only seem to be experiencing this issue with Corojo 99. Florida Sumatra, Little Dutch, and Havana 142 seem to me more forgiving when picked before peak maturity. Thankfully I'm learning this lesson with "trash" leaves!

 

[mwaller]

So, a number of the Havana 142 lower leaves are getting droopy. Is this a sign of maturity, or...? The soil is plenty moist.

 

[Alpine]

That looks mature to me. Deluxestogie has far more experience than me with cigar strains (actually, he has more experience than most forum members!), maybe he will chime in to give sensible advice.

pier

 

[mwaller]

Here's a similar situation on another Havana 142...

 

[deluxestogie]

I have many varieties that are showing limp, drooping leaves during mid to late afternoon (high 80s to low 90s). By sunset, they have perked up.

Wait for something to turn yellow on the stalk. Cigar leaf will come out just fine if it's too mature. Wait for some yellow. Get a sense of the progression on the stalk.

Bob