Daniel,
Glad to hear you like the African Red and Costello. I thought you might. I have a couple more I think you will like too.
I am growing 70 more of the A.R. and a hundred plus Costello this year because I really like the smoke. Both are little known varieties rescued from the gov seed bank before its demise by Joelw, a HTGT member. We did some trading and he split the 10 varieties he got from them with me. I found a couple other gems in that batch too that I'll talk about later.
The African Red, (or South African Red might be a better name) is a name I gave it. It has no official name that I know of. The ars-grin number for it is PI 420191 The original seed was donated to the USDA from Transvaal, South Africa in 1975. The package Joel received was labeled with the plant identifier number and the word "red" on it. So we called it African Red. I really like this plant. It is a bright leaf variety. air cures very well, almost no suckering, it is a heavy producer, and like most bright leafs it has a light flavor and is mild to smoke. But it has a very high nicotine content at 29/mg per gram of dried leaf. So if you like Virgina Golds but need more kick to your blend, this might be the plant to grow. The biggest downside to it is the 80 day maturity. It barely fits my growing season. But give me 3-4 more seasons and I bet I can have the maturity down to under 70. I'm working on that one.
The Costello ars-grin number is PI 318757 It has no official name listed either but in the PDF file download I found it referred to as Costello Negro. It is a bright leaf variety and I have found it be a very good producer as well. But it has a much shorter maturity time at 65 days. It also is high in nicotine at 24/mg per gram of leaf. Again, like most bright leafs, it is light and mild to smoke. But it has a bit of a different flavor to it that I love. Kind of nutty maybe. Hell, I'm terrible at describing tastes my self but that's what my wife says. lol She really likes it too. One other thing that I really liked about this plant was how easy it cured even when cut and hung whole very late in the season. It colored up near perfectly during November when the temps were only 40-50 degrees. A lot of other plants I hung then didn't and dried nearly green.
Back to topic:
I am growing Big Gem for the first time this year also. And I agree with the other comments about it. It looks like a keeper. It's nice to hear it is actually smokable after only 4 weeks of hanging! Most tobacco will choke you good after only 4 weeks aging. I have 36 bagged plants in my patch so I should have a good supply of seed available for next season.
Sky
