Thank you. Good luck with your season.Quite a bit ahead of me there, I won’t (and can’t) really start any of my grow until around mid May and that’s if I start under lights.
Your plants are looking good.
The soil didn't require nearly as much water as I expected for the dry soil to become fully moist. 4" is definitely too much standing water during rainy weather. Fully saturated soil and 4" of standing water would probably drown the little fellers. I drilled the drain hole at 3" and will watch the grow bags minus plants for a few days and watch the soil. I will probably go to 2" pretty soon. I would rather water more frequently than to drown the plants even once. Tobacco doesn't do well with too much water. We have good rain in the spring but dry as dust and temps in the 90's during the summer. Finding the right balance is going to be fun. My goal is to water once in the pool, allow the water in the pool to dry, allow the moisture in the soil to dry, then water again. I will be happy with watering every other day. Watering every day last year was too much. I was sick one day and missed watering and the plants wilted right down to the ground. The stalks were as floppy as rope. I had to water the roots while the plants lay on the ground until the stalks stiffened back up enough to be able to stand the plants back up. I thought I had lost the whole crop and only missed one day of watering. I want some off days.
(Note- 7" of soil in the grow bags)
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Those are pretty flowers. Mine aren't up yet but here is a photo from last year.Clearly, we have different problems to solve depending on where we live in the world, hot and dry summers are something very distant for me, on the other hand wet and rainy summers, I am familiar with that. And short and cold But today I picked a sure sign of spring, Tussilago, a nice yellow flower that grows here in Sweden in the spring.
That is also known as coltsfoot, which was introduced into the US from Europe, and now ranges throughout most of the eastern US.Tussilago
This is my second dose of fertilizer. I use a conductivity/TDS meter to determine how much fertilizer to use. 900 for burley, 750 for all the others. A commercial tobacco grower in Kentucky we call BigBonner recommended the meter. He uses it in his float trays in his greenhouses. It's made by Hanna.
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This is my second dose of fertilizer. I use a conductivity/TDS meter to determine how much fertilizer to use. 900 for burley, 750 for all the others. A commercial tobacco grower in Kentucky we call BigBonner recommended the meter. He uses it in his float trays in his greenhouses. It's made by Hanna.
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Big Bonner has a few posts about the meters. You can enter TDS meter in the search box to see his posts. Your plants are looking great.