Moldovan 456 for Cigar Wrapper?

[GrowleyMonster]

I really like the color I see in pics of the Moldovan 456, but I can't judge texture very well without seeing the tobacco. I have always liked a nice pale wrapper for the visual aspect but I really can't be bothered with stretching shade cloth and wiring up 12 foot tall plants so I can't really get best results from growing CT Shade, which I usually use for wrapper. Good wrapper can be dreadfully expensive, and I would really like to grow my own wrapper. Filler is easy, but it is also cheap to buy, so not such a big deal either way. Has anybody here grown this, and used Moldovan 456? What was your impression? I need to start picking out my seed pretty soon so I am not stuck with no seed in January when it is time to start the seedlings. If anybody grew it this year, I would love to buy a cured leaf I can look at and handle.

My other wrapper choices are CT Broadleaf and Moonlight and I am leaning toward the CTBL. I got my plants all mixed up but I could definitely tell the CTBL from the rest by the big beautiful leaves. The first wrapper size leaves are still color curing so I don't know exactly how they will turn out, but the size is nice, they aren't all bumpy and lumpy, and the side veins get pretty delicate about halfway out to the edges. Also the leaves don't curl very much. Another issue is I had a lot of very fierce thunderstorms that flattened my bakky a couple of times. Some stalks stood back up. Some meandered along the ground for a couple of feet and then bent back upward at that point, so I ended up with a lot of mud lugs. The CTBL is a shorter and stockier plant so it should resist blow-downs better. OTOH the Moonlight seems to be a good producer, with leaves almost as big. But I am really after a nice claro yellowish-tan wrapper and I think priming the Moldovan after it begins turning on the stalk would give me that. It's just a question of texture, and also of course aroma and flavor. Maybe the CTBL for binder, and Moldovan 456 for wrapper? I mostly make short fat perfectos and my binder and especially wrapper need good width for making the turn.

I am leaning toward Criollo 98 for filler, maybe blending that Seco with the Ligero from the wrapper plants, or vice versa, the Ligero and Viso from my filler plants with the too-small Seco leaves and especially lugs from the wrapper variety. I might also try some Piloto. Darn. I really don't want to plant four different varieties next year. Two would be wonderful.

The FL Sumatra looks good in a lot of respects, but I want a pale wrapper. I rolled a few dutchies in Sumatra and they were okay as small cigars. Didn't seem to work as well for me for fat perfectos or toros. Maybe I didn't have the case just right for that leaf.

 

[deluxestogie]

Burley varieties have been commonly used as light wrappers for two centuries. The Moldova 456 should give similar results. The bottom half of the stalk will provide the thinnest, lightest-colored and largest leaves. As you work up the stalk, the leaf cures darker and thicker. Another factor in final color is that the higher the humidity during color-curing, the darker the leaf may become.

Bob

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Burley varieties have been commonly used as light wrappers for two centuries. The Moldova 456 should give similar results. The bottom half of the stalk will provide the thinnest, lightest-colored and largest leaves. As you work up the stalk, the leaf cures darker and thicker. Another factor in final color is that the higher the humidity during color-curing, the darker the leaf may become.

Bob

Thanks for that, Bob! That gives me some ideas.

I assume the smaller leaves will make good rolling bakky for my cigarette smoking friends?

 

[deluxestogie]

The nice thing about home-grown tobacco is that you get to discover what you've produced, and make decisions based on that.

I failed to mention one consideration regarding purchasing commercial wrapper leaf. It is priced per pound, but you use it per leaf. Since it may be much thinner than filler or binder grades, you can potentially end up with twice as many wrapper leaves in a pound of commercial wrapper as you would get in a pound of filler leaves. Since much of the cost of growing and finishing tobacco is labor, which is per leaf with primed varieties like wrapper, the cost per leaf remains relatively constant, regardless of all but the poorest grades.

Bob

 

[Alpine]

This will be interesting: the use of a FC/oriental as a cigar wrapper. Please keep us posted!

pier

 

[deluxestogie]

Is teal blue or green? Our categories of tobacco variety usage are sometimes based on the notion of distinct characteristics. As humans, we want to sort our sensory input into tidy categories, so we unconsciously establish arbitrary boundaries. The rainbow is a continuum of all visible wavelengths of light, yet we "see" red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo and violet.

Bob

 

[GrowleyMonster]

This will be interesting: the use of a FC/oriental as a cigar wrapper. Please keep us posted!

pier

If I could find some Moldovan 456 wrapper leaf, I would already have rolled and smoked a couple. I just pulled the trigger last night on my seed. Moldovan 456, CT Broadleaf, Piloto Cubano, and I will probably also buy fresh Criollo 98 seed, though I think I still have a bunch left and I am sure I can coax a few into germinating. I will set seeds around the last week of January and set out half the seedlings the middle of March. So allowing time to grow, cure, and age, I can report back maybe July 2024, I guess.

If the M456 sucks as wrapper, I will still have the CTBL and I can always buy CT Shade leaf from my favorite vendor.

 

[SlamFire]

If I could find some Moldovan 456 wrapper leaf, I would already have rolled and smoked a couple. I just pulled the trigger last night on my seed. Moldovan 456, CT Broadleaf, Piloto Cubano, and I will probably also buy fresh Criollo 98 seed, though I think I still have a bunch left and I am sure I can coax a few into germinating. I will set seeds around the last week of January and set out half the seedlings the middle of March. So allowing time to grow, cure, and age, I can report back maybe July 2024, I guess.

If the M456 sucks as wrapper, I will still have the CTBL and I can always buy CT Shade leaf from my favorite vendor.

When you grow your Connecticut Broadleaf, may I strongly suggest putting a 3 or 4 foot stake in the ground along with the seedlings. Of the 4 varieties that I grew this year, the broadleaf was the most susceptible to falling over after heavy rain or wind.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

When you grow your Connecticut Broadleaf, may I strongly suggest putting a 3 or 4 foot stake in the ground along with the seedlings. Of the 4 varieties that I grew this year, the broadleaf was the most susceptible to falling over after heavy rain or wind.

Yes, you may indeed strongly suggest that. I have definite plans to stake EVERYTHING, actually. Even though I should complete harvesting by the end of June, so no worries about hurricanes, we get some really violent thunderstorms sometimes in spring and summer. I watched my crop get hammered several times and many of my plants are like big gnarly vines on the ground for their first three feet of stalk. I didn't want to stake 100 or so plants even after the first big knockdown, so I thought I would just see what would happen. I will definitely get more wrappers and big binders out of the next crop, through wider spacing, sunnier location, and staking, even though I will probably plant out fewer seedlings than this year.

Don't get me wrong, I am pretty happy with what I am harvesting and my bakky crop is more or less meeting my first year noob expectations. But I think I learned enough to increase my yield with fewer plants next year, and staking will be a big part of my strategy.