Diameter of a mature plant?

[Iowalez]

Okay, so I'm already thinking about next year's garden. I'm isolating at home 24/7 and planning the garden is something cheerful to do. I'll have about 50 x 40 sq ft area for tobacco. I know to plant the Orientals at the much closer spacing between plants and rows, and the others 3 feet apart in rows 4 feet apart. I plant my tomatoes that way, using 2 foot diameter Texas tomato cages. So there's a foot of space between the cages and the leaves of the plants end up touching at maturity. But when I'm planning my garden, I figure 2 feet diameter for each plant in my head. The cages are four or six feet tall and contain my large heirloom plants very well.

Is tobacco the same way? What's the diameter of a mature burley or bright leaf variety grown at that spacing? I want to be able to picture in my head how much space a mature, columnar tobacco plant physically occupies.

Thanks!

 

[deluxestogie]

This is from one of my grows some years ago. The staggered pattern is the most space efficient. The walkway between each bed is at least 4 feet wide, allowing access to the perimeter of each bed. (The beds can be as long as you wish, but the width determines accessibility for caring for the plants. These are for full-size plants, and has worked well for me for a decade.

For small Orientals, I typically use a separate, 5' x 6' bed (a half-length bed) and fill it (in the same kind of staggered pattern) with between 16 and 25 plants (4 plants in each of 4 staggered rows or 5 plants in each of 5 staggered rows, respectively). I use the closer spacing for most Basma-type Orientals. The wider spacing does well with the Prilep and other larger Orientals, such as Samsun, Bafra, Trabzon, and Katerini.

So, I don't do any single rows with a path between each. Most forum members use the traditional, American tobacco planting (space between plants, space between rows).

Bob

 

[Iowalez]

Thank you for the diagram, Bob. That's a big help. Your circles are the same size I use for tomatoes in my garden plans. I think I will do it your way. I've done biodynamic intensive gardening before. My method now is sort of a hybrid. My new garden area had been lawn (grass and clover) for a hundred years and I've never seen so many earthworms as what I've got here. My soil is in good health. So I think intensive planting would work for me.

 

[deluxestogie]

biodynamic intensive gardening

I initially double-dug my beds down to 2 feet. For the last few years, I only have single-dug down to 1 foot. The double-dug beds seemed to be somewhat more productive, but every year, I had a lot of blowdowns, once the plants were above 4' tall. Blowdowns are not as much of a problem with single-dug beds. It's a toss up. Blowdowns can usually be easily re-stood, if you do it as soon as it is safe to go outside, sometimes requiring a tomato stake to stabilize the stalk. It's just muddy, messy work, sometimes while it is still drizzling. Over the years, I've had only one tobacco plant cleanly snap off its stalk in the wind (during a derecho).

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Every climate is going to be different. In the stuff I've read in the past I have gained the impression that burleys require the most space. Recommendations are usually in the neighbourhood of 36-42" apart. This is in prime burley growing regions with high fertilization rates, and hand picking.

Where I live with cooler soil temperatures, and with my history of green manure as the sole fertilizer, two feet is enough. Anything else is wasted space.

Studies show that yield weight per acre and leaf count go up with the number of plants, but leaf size and quality index goes up with increased spacing. Agriculturally, one wants to find a balancing point between price per ton and number of tons produced. We all grow for different reasons.

In Alberta, I have found closer spacing to be significantly more worth it. I can't recommend that for you. Tobacco in Iowa will get much larger than it does here.

Run your rows north south if you can.

 

[LeftyRighty]

I have a larger plot of garden space, approximately 25 x 35 ft, and plant a few different strains in long rows
All are planted in staggered double rows - large leaf strains like Virginia Bright Leaf spaced 3 ft apart and 2 ft between the row, smaller leaf strains (African Red or Yellow Twist Bud burley) at 2 1/2 ft spacing.
But I allow a full 6 ft between the double rows, as when the plants mature, this allows adequate room between the rows for maintenance. And I still have had a problem with breaking leaf while picking suckers or topping plants, and up-righting & staking after storms.
I also have planted small-leaf Turkish (Prilip) in clumps, 6-inch apart in 2 1/2 ft wire cages, works well but a pita for suckering.

 

[deluxestogie]

Turkish (Prilip) in clumps, 6-inch apart in 2 1/2 ft wire cages, works well but a pita for suckering.

I do remove the lower suckers from Prilep until the bud heads begin to emerge, but have found that Prilep suckers after that seem to produce nice leaf that sun-cures on the stalk-harvested main stalk to high quality leaf.

Bob

 

[Iowalez]

I realize it's going to take a few years before I know how the tobacco plants grow here, sizewise. Not every growing season will be perfect weather like we had this year. Except for my pole bean trellises, I did plant row crops north- south. Other things were planted intensively in beds, like leeks and potatoes. My soil is only tilled 6 inches deep, but all the plants developed massive root systems. I hired a man with a tractor and tiller implement to till for me last month, and will repeat it in Spring, if weather and soil moisture permits. For my first year garden I tilled with my big Troybilt Junior Horse rear tine tiller after killing the lawn with Roundup and letting it die and rot.

Two neighbors have had smaller gardens in the same place for years and the soil is worn out from lack of new humus. I was not that impressed with their gardens. Not nearly as nice as my new dirt. During the August drought their plants looked stressed and thirsty, while my plants kept on growing and the garden was lush. Passersby and neighbors marveled at it. I have a walking mower and put the grass clippings in the garden, plus the front section gets covered in fallen maple leaves each Fall that gets tilled in. I'm looking for a source of manure to get a truckload. And i dont mean a load in the short bed of my pickup truck, i want a dump truck full. Either rotted manure or I'll compost a truckload of fresh. Other than hogs, most farmers around my area don't raise livestock, so this is a challenge to locate and obtain. At the home with my ex husband, a neighboring small dairy farmer would spread rotted manure for me, disc in the Fall, and supplied me with round bales of oat straw for mulch. That was a great deal I wish I could replicate here. But I'm in a different section of northeast Iowa now, out on the prairie and farther north, the growing season two weeks shorter than my old home in Luana, and the only things grown around me is corn and beans.

Oddly, people here start their tomato seedlings on Valentines Day, while I still start mine in mid-March. I can't transplant outside until about two weeks after Mothers Day, when the weather is settled. Valentines Day is way too early. In February I'm busy making hundreds of origami paper pots from newspaper. Paper pots make transplanting easy. I fill the flats with 1" paper pots and then move those seedlings into 3" pots as they get bigger. I drive 35 miles to a gardening store that sells Fox Farm organic potting soil and seedling mix from Norcal, where I lived for 26 years. Fox Farm soil is expensive, but worth every penny. I can't get Happy Frog potting soil so Fox Farm is the next best brand. It took me 6 years to claw my back to having a life again after fleeing my abusive husband and losing everything I had, and this house and my garden was the last part of restoring my former life, a crowning achievement for me to accomplish all on my own. On the plus side, I don't have to listen to him complain about all my hobbies and interests anymore, and I had to give up smoking for 17 years, so my new tobacco hobby would never have happened. I will never give up my independence and freedom again, as long as I live. In business and life, I run the show as I see fit.