Bex
Well-Known Member
Greetings, fellow travelers. And sorry, I never did a grow blog this year (although I should have, as this has been my best year ever). A quick recap:
This year, I grew LV and burley, which germinated on February 18. They grew under a plant light in the house, were hardened off outside on April 7, and repotted and left in the little greenhouse on April 18. Over the course of May 6-May 17, I transplanted 27 LV and 27 burley up into the rather weather beaten tunnel......
Sorry about the thumbnails - my internet here is too slow to upload the full photo, and every time I click on ‘full image’, everything disappears.....but hopefully you’ll get the idea.....I was still growing my plants in upside down pots to try to compensate for the poor soil conditions. Anyway, I planted LV on one side, and burley on the other, as in the past I lost track of what was where.
May was a horrible month, so I looked forward to another summer of really poor Irish weather. And then......we had the best summer I’ve had since I moved here 21 years ago. The weather was calm and sunny. We had no rain for 40 days (so dry that I was actually rationing the water in the house, and using the cisterns I have outside that collect rainwater during the year). The plants were nothing short of magnificent, particularly the burley:
By the end of July, the bottom leaves of the burley were already starting to yellow:
The LV didn’t look so bad either. I actually began flue curing on July 4th.
I’m an old hand at flue curing now - thanks to the guys on this forum. It’s basically a ‘set and forget’ kind of technique. I’ve kept a diary from all the years I’ve been doing this, and have to laugh at my first year (2014) when I was running up to the shed where my flue curing chamber is, about every 15 minutes, and panicking.
My LV came out fairly nicely:
However, my crop was only about 400 leaves this year - I was hoping for more.....
So, now I’m concentrating on my burley. I’ve started priming the yellow leaf from the plants, and hanging them in the shed:
The weather, sadly, has begun to change here now - we’ve had rain every day in August, and the temperatures are a lot cooler - maybe 60F during the day. While the shed is somewhat sheltered, last year (my second attempt at burley - the first year, the shed roof blew off...LOL) the leaf was attacked by mold during the course of the autumn. I don’t want this to happen this year, and am ‘flying by the seat of my pants’ on this one. When the leaf is brown, I’m taking it into the house - like the leaf hanging all the way on the left:
The leaf is incredibly sticky - so much so that my fingers stick together when handling it. Anyway, here is my plan......
Now that my chamber is (sadly) finished with the LV, I’m going to try to do the ‘air cure’ of the burley in the chamber. I don’t think I’ll get more than perhaps another month, if that, from hanging in the shed. I plan to use the chamber as a ‘controlled environment’, setting the temperature between 65-90F (which will be easy with the digital thermostat), and attempting to control the humidity between 65-70%, by using the crockpot (with the lid mostly on) and adding water to the pot when needed. Fingers crossed that this works.
The outlets to buy whole leaf over here have pretty much dried up. The one source that I have left here, while their LV is fine, their burley is way too ‘cigar-like’ for me. My blend is about 65% burley to 35% LV, so the taste of the burley is important (the LV, to me at least, is more like filler than anything else). So the success of my burley is somewhat important, if I really plan to try to be self-sufficient. Hopefully.
By the way, I also have a small crop of Amersfoort, growing outside. I did a fast flue cure run on some of it - I haven’t tried smoking it to see what it’s like. I’ll also try air curing this in the chamber, as well.
So, there you have it in a nutshell....!!! A poor excuse for a ‘grow blog’, and I really do miss posting here on the forum. And if anyone has any suggestions or advice for my burley plan......
This year, I grew LV and burley, which germinated on February 18. They grew under a plant light in the house, were hardened off outside on April 7, and repotted and left in the little greenhouse on April 18. Over the course of May 6-May 17, I transplanted 27 LV and 27 burley up into the rather weather beaten tunnel......
Sorry about the thumbnails - my internet here is too slow to upload the full photo, and every time I click on ‘full image’, everything disappears.....but hopefully you’ll get the idea.....I was still growing my plants in upside down pots to try to compensate for the poor soil conditions. Anyway, I planted LV on one side, and burley on the other, as in the past I lost track of what was where.
May was a horrible month, so I looked forward to another summer of really poor Irish weather. And then......we had the best summer I’ve had since I moved here 21 years ago. The weather was calm and sunny. We had no rain for 40 days (so dry that I was actually rationing the water in the house, and using the cisterns I have outside that collect rainwater during the year). The plants were nothing short of magnificent, particularly the burley:
By the end of July, the bottom leaves of the burley were already starting to yellow:
The LV didn’t look so bad either. I actually began flue curing on July 4th.
I’m an old hand at flue curing now - thanks to the guys on this forum. It’s basically a ‘set and forget’ kind of technique. I’ve kept a diary from all the years I’ve been doing this, and have to laugh at my first year (2014) when I was running up to the shed where my flue curing chamber is, about every 15 minutes, and panicking.
My LV came out fairly nicely:
However, my crop was only about 400 leaves this year - I was hoping for more.....
So, now I’m concentrating on my burley. I’ve started priming the yellow leaf from the plants, and hanging them in the shed:
The weather, sadly, has begun to change here now - we’ve had rain every day in August, and the temperatures are a lot cooler - maybe 60F during the day. While the shed is somewhat sheltered, last year (my second attempt at burley - the first year, the shed roof blew off...LOL) the leaf was attacked by mold during the course of the autumn. I don’t want this to happen this year, and am ‘flying by the seat of my pants’ on this one. When the leaf is brown, I’m taking it into the house - like the leaf hanging all the way on the left:
The leaf is incredibly sticky - so much so that my fingers stick together when handling it. Anyway, here is my plan......
Now that my chamber is (sadly) finished with the LV, I’m going to try to do the ‘air cure’ of the burley in the chamber. I don’t think I’ll get more than perhaps another month, if that, from hanging in the shed. I plan to use the chamber as a ‘controlled environment’, setting the temperature between 65-90F (which will be easy with the digital thermostat), and attempting to control the humidity between 65-70%, by using the crockpot (with the lid mostly on) and adding water to the pot when needed. Fingers crossed that this works.
The outlets to buy whole leaf over here have pretty much dried up. The one source that I have left here, while their LV is fine, their burley is way too ‘cigar-like’ for me. My blend is about 65% burley to 35% LV, so the taste of the burley is important (the LV, to me at least, is more like filler than anything else). So the success of my burley is somewhat important, if I really plan to try to be self-sufficient. Hopefully.
By the way, I also have a small crop of Amersfoort, growing outside. I did a fast flue cure run on some of it - I haven’t tried smoking it to see what it’s like. I’ll also try air curing this in the chamber, as well.
So, there you have it in a nutshell....!!! A poor excuse for a ‘grow blog’, and I really do miss posting here on the forum. And if anyone has any suggestions or advice for my burley plan......
