Deluxestogie Grow Log 2023

[deluxestogie]

Done!

I have two bagged tobacco plants still standing, waiting for a bit more pod browning. Everything else is in the shed. I would cut and hang 8 plants, then have to return to the house, scrub the sticky goo from my hands, then sit on my front porch to rest, drink ice water, and cool down for the duration of exactly one cigar. Then out again. Five installments in all. Each installment involved 2 to 4 round trips between garden and shed, depending on how heavy the stalks were.

• (8) Olor
• (16) Corojo 99
• (16) NB-11 burley [burley stalks are always heavy]

My challenge was that the humidity was high, the temp was in the upper 80s, and each round trip was rewarded with having to go into the breezeless, near 100°F shed to hang the stalks. Even the mosquitos were sweating.

Once I was done, I made one last trip to collect and bag the NB-11 flyers and trash, and carry that to the shed. With thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow, and with those three varieties looking so gorgeous out in the field, I decided to forego any additional maturation, in favor of preservation.

All the sun-curing stalks of Xanthi-Yaka 18a are now left with only a few leaves each, and are also in the shed.

It's now too dark for a photo of my barren garden.

Bob

 

[GreenDragon]

What a great feeling when you have the final harvest and don’t have to worry about summer storms etc. Now you can concentrate on curing and kilning etc. My crop is being a little pokey this year, but I think I can solve that problem for next year by removing two small trees. Still, I think everything will be harvested by the end of the month.

 

[deluxestogie]

Curing happens by itself. Kilning happens when I feel like it. I'm sure I'll start to miss having to walk the tobacco twice a day, weeding, suckering, etc. But I'll manage somehow.

This season I had no blowdowns, zero aphids, and had to spray BT for hornworms only once. And I never hauled out the garden hose, despite the long dry spell. My peas are now finished. My squash, green beans and cukes are clearly slowing down. [My freezer is full with green beans and squash.] I put up 4 half-gallon jars of cuke pickles.

What is left are my notably slow tomatoes, the Blue Ballet Hubbard squash, and 6 Chilhuacle Negro pepper plants. Those latter will be stalk-harvested, and hung to dry in the shed like tobacco.

Bob

 

[MadFarmer]

and 6 Chilhuacle Negro pepper plants.

Thank you for the reminder. I need to add Chilhuacle peppers to my seed order for next year. I mole.

 

[deluxestogie]

Here is where I got them:

Chilhuacle Negro Hot Pepper Seeds - (Capsicum annuum)

Want the finest heirloom seeds and great advice? We help you grow your best garden - from the soil to the seed to the food you love!

store.underwoodgardens.com

They are currently out of stock. My Chilhuacle negro plants have been sluggish growers. I'm not sure what to expect from them yet.

Bob

 

[TigerTom]

Refining Fire Chiles has them in stock.

Chilhuacle Negro Seeds | Super Hot Chiles

Chilhuacle Negro Pepper Seeds (10 count)

www.superhotchiles.com

And Adaptive Seeds.

Organic Chilhuacle Negro Hot Pepper Seed - Adaptive Seeds

Chilhuacle Negro is a dark chocolate brown hot pepper with rich spicy flesh that is a key ingredient in the classic mole negro from Oaxaca, Mexico. When ripe,

www.adaptiveseeds.com

 

[deluxestogie]

The porch MD 609 has not even begun to form buds. Lots of time. It's just there for my enjoyment of seeing it, and the hummingbirds that always visit the blossoms.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Stepping just inside the door of my shed, this is the view that greets me.

This is a high-angle view.

While the curing of the Xanthi-Yaka 18a is not quite complete, this is what I have collected so far.

Usually a week or more prior to cutting off the bud heads, I twist a wire hook onto each of the bagged heads. When the time comes to cut them, I simply snip the stalk with a pair of pruners, and hook the bags over my fingers, to carry them to the house (enclosed back porch) for drying.

I always take care to bend over the sharp end of the "hook".

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Lonely Little Yellow at Sunset.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

The bagged heads of 3 of my 4 bagged plants are now hanging in my enclosed back porch, to fully dry. The Vuelta Abajo seed head still needs a bit more time to mature.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

From the chair on my front porch, I just saw over 30 robins in a corner of the yard, happily snatching bugs from the grass. I've never seen such a thing in summer. During warm months, robins are territorial and combative. Though they do flock sociably in the winter, this is mid-August. Very odd.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

I feel like I've been doing quite a bit of work over the past few days, but the only events that have seemed photogenic occurred so unexpectedly that I couldn't capture them with a camera. This latest is the first time I've seen such a thing, in person, during my entire life.

Another bird story:
Just moments ago, a mere twenty feet from my front porch, directly in the center of my view of the pasture, about 8 feet off the ground, a sparrow flew from the big maple tree. Perhaps a half-second later, a hidden kestrel launched from the same tree, grasped the silent sparrow, and flew off out of view. The entire sequence spanned one second. A blink of a moment. It was a horizontal flicker.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

This is my porch corner MD 609 at 96 days after transplant.

It gets early morning direct sunlight, then mid-morning to late afternoon direct sunlight. After dark, it is exposed to my yellow porch light until ~11:30 pm. This plant shows not even the slightest indication of forming a bud head. I had promised my hummingbirds to expect blossoms soon.

The sixteen MD 609 planted at about the same time, in the long bed against the west wall of my house were all stalk-harvested about two weeks ago.

Bob

 

[LazyBaba]

Nice all looks good your way..

 

[MadFarmer]

This is my porch corner MD 609 at 96 days after transplant.

It gets early morning direct sunlight, then mid-morning to late afternoon direct sunlight. After dark, it is exposed to my yellow porch light until ~11:30 pm. This plant shows not even the slightest indication of forming a bud head. I had promised my hummingbirds to expect blossoms soon.

The sixteen MD 609 planted at about the same time, in the long bed against the west wall of my house were all stalk-harvested about two weeks ago.

Bob

Do you have any theories as to why it hasn't formed a bud head?

 

[deluxestogie]

Different light regimen, different soil water flow. The MD 609 in the long bed were getting about 2/3 day of direct sunlight, amplified by the reflection from the nearby, white wall.

So I have no clear theory, other than very different conditions.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

A look inside the curing shed today:

Bob

 

[Homegrowngoodnes]

Lookin good! I bet that MD would make some fine smokeless!

 

[deluxestogie]

The tardy MD 609 growing at the corner of my front porch steps has begun budding. My hummingbirds are becoming impatient. This one plant is the only primary tobacco plant yet to be harvested.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out to the garden to dig up all the tobacco stumps, but the ground was too hard and dry to do that. I decided to wait for a couple of days of rain, then dig them. The weather was either too hot or too rainy or too nice for me to bother. So now, I've got a crop of bug-riddled, runted leaves coming up in every bed. The one exception is the Little Yellow. Although the majority of the Little Yellow suckers are as useless as the rest of the suckers, a few of them actually look promising.

If I can see sufficient maturation far enough in advance of a predicted first frost (used to be 15 October), then I will likely stalk-harvest those nicer Little Yellow suckers.

Bob