My First Harvest!

[ustamills]

Hey everybody! I am tickled pink.

So this is my first harvest ever! Very modest, I know. But having lost *everything* last year I am thankful! It's a combination of Criollo (sp?) and Habana seed.



We're getting a freeze tonight so I had to get these in. This is a criminally late crop, but the whole year was weird. These with a few others = about 80 leaves in total so far. Maybe more to come? This is all supposed to be for cigars.

With the freeze I have a couple of questions:

• I left some leaves on the stalk still because they were smallish. How sensitive is tobacco to freezing?
• Also, I let two stalks go to seed. I read that seed pods needed to dry on the stalk. As of this morning I still had a couple of blooms going, but plenty of pods with no blooms. Do I leave the seed pods on or pull them before they freeze too?
• Lastly, I got some ideas on this forum how to deal with aphids but they kept coming back. So, after harvesting these leaves I cleaned them all by hand, one-by-one, to make sure all the bugs are gone. I tried shaking all the leaves and the hands (only 6 leaves per hand) to get water off. Do I have anything to worry about?

Thanks for the help everybody! I am looking forward to some Indiana cigars this spring!

 

[deluxestogie]

Congrats on your crop. Tobacco, especially tender, top leaf, will freeze fairly easily if the temp remains a smidgen below 32°F long enough. A brief frost may leave them unscathed.

Once you have seed pods clearly developed, you can cut the top stalk, and bring them in to dry. Brown pods are not injured by freezing, but less mature, all green pods are. Most developed pods, even fully green ones, will go on to produce viable seed, once they have dried out.

Wet leaf is subject to barn rot. Check a hand tomorrow. If there is still water up where you've tied them together, then dry that off.

Bob

 

[ustamills]

Great! Thank you, I am heading out to grab my seed! I'll check for wet tobacco tomorrow.

DarkSky.net is usually a pretty accurate forecast the day before and they are now reporting 34 as a low tomorrow at 7am and 33 the next day. So I think the plants will survive. Maybe I'll get some more leaves!

 

[plantdude]

Stalk cutting your plants and hanging them somewhere they won't freeze seems to keep them alive and semi growing a week or two longer. I noticed some of my stalk harvested and hung pants actually flowered and set seed. They were small pods and not a lot of seed, but if you already have some pods/seeds developing I would think the cut plants would countinue to funnel extra energy into seed development for their few remaining dying weeks. Might be an option when you know the frost is going to hit if you are in need of seed.
Tobacco is a weed they will be throwing everything they have into producing seed

 

[LIBERTYCHICKEN]

I made the mistake years ago, of hanging in the garage by a shelf full of random chemicals, I strongly suspect that my leaf had imparted some smells from whatever I had stored their.