Woman Nylons for "Bud Bags"? Maybe not.....

[Hanzy4200]

This is my first year growing, so there are a lot of experiments and unknowns. One such example is bagging my flower heads. I looked around locally for a suitable material and came up empty handed. On another forum, I read of other growers using woman's nylons as bags. Why not? I bagged 6 heads this way using rubber bands at the base. Everything seemed ok, at first. Now my bud bags look like brown softballs, and feel about the same. The flowers are completely compacted into each other and have swelled the nylons to their limit. I'm now concerned that they could rot, or possible not self-pollinate. Is this a valid concern? Today I found a cheap source of sheer nylon material, go figure.

 

[DGBAMA]

Definitely not ideal, but if you have pods growing, then you got pollination so you will have seed. In-pollinated flowers simply die, no pod formation.

 

[Knucklehead]

Istanbulin, a member from Turkey, told me that he saw farmers in Turkey using women's nylons.

Where are you located? If you'll put a general location in your profile, we can better answer future questions, especially about curing as those answers are location and weather specific.

If you are worried about the viability of the seed, allow a top sucker to grow. It will also produce a seed head and you can bag that seed head using different material. Then do a germination test at the end of the year and you will have a better idea of which way is best or if both are equally as good.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Hanzy4200]

Thank you. I've been using this site as a resource since mid Feb. and it's been incredibly helpful. I'm for southern Pa. I need to get my profile updated for sure.

I doctored up 7-8 proper bags tonight and plan to set them up tomorrow. I think I will attempt to salvage at least a few of the previously nylon bagged flowers, and use the rest on fresh heads. I've been topping the plants regularly, but there is always a fresh one sneaking up. I hope to save some of the previous heads though as they are huge. I was concerned about even having them exposed for a few minutes to change bags, as they might get cross pollinated, but I understand now that nearly all tobacco pollination happens via bees, bugs ect. Last thing I want is to end up planting sets of crappy hybrid plants next spring.

 

[Knucklehead]

What varieties are you growing? How do you take your tobacco, pipe, cigarette, cigars, snus?

 

[Michibacy]

To be honest I use a mixture of cheese cloth (fine mesh, used in canning) as well as women's nylons. I haven't had a problem with seed viability yet. Just make sure you leave enough room for them to grow upwards if they can't grow outwards.

Other than that I know some folks have used mesh tooling (what you see on ladies' wedding dresses)