Wruk53 2024 Grow Log

[wruk53]

My tentative tobacco plan for hurricane Milton is to stalk harvest Tofta tomorrow afternoon and hang in the garage. The leaves are showing signs of maturity/ripeness at least halfway up the plants. The Little Yellow is not quite as advanced, but the lowest few leaves are thick and stiff, so I'll prime 2-4 leaves from each plant and hang in the garage also. The forecast calls for 50-70 mph winds on Wednesday in the Naples area.

 

[Anders A]

My tentative tobacco plan for hurricane Milton is to stalk harvest Tofta tomorrow afternoon and hang in the garage. The leaves are showing signs of maturity/ripeness at least halfway up the plants. The Little Yellow is not quite as advanced, but the lowest few leaves are thick and stiff, so I'll prime 2-4 leaves from each plant and hang in the garage also. The forecast calls for 50-70 mph winds on Wednesday in the Naples area.

Hope you and the others are not hit too hard by Milton's progress, even up here in the north (Sweden) there is talk of the hurricane and the storm that is coming.

 

[deluxestogie]

Hurricane Milton landfall:

Bob

 

[Anders A]

Thinking about you "over there" a lot, how are you doing? The news we are fed here is that South Florida is hard hit, and not just the west side, there is talk of deaths on the east side as well.

 

[wruk53]

Thinking about you "over there" a lot, how are you doing? The news we are fed here is that South Florida is hard hit, and not just the west side, there is talk of deaths on the east side as well.

We're fine. No damage to our home. We had winds from 50-70 mph and about 4 inches of rain. We lost power for about 14 hours; it just came back on in the last hour. No serious damage to the tobacco plants either, some of them are laid over a bit. I had harvested most of it though on Tuesday. I'll try to post some pics later.

 

[wruk53]

After the storm. A lot of the Little Yellow leaf I harvested on Tuesday was very immature, but the heat and humidity are high so I think they will color okay. I picked every leaf that was getting stiff, not many were showing any yellow. I have a fan running to keep the air moving. Tofta seems to be coloring quickly.

 

[wruk53]

We had a cold front that actually made it all the way here yesterday. There is a 10-degree difference in the day/night temps, it feels great! I moved the curing leaf from the garage back to the lanai, it was drying too fast in the garage.

I'm trying for a sucker crop with Tofta.

The LY plants in the red mulch aren't looking too good.

All of the large plants are Little Yellow, they are budding and will need to be topped soon.

 

[Knucklehead]

We had a cold front that actually made it all the way here yesterday. There is a 10-degree difference in the day/night temps, it feels great! I moved the curing leaf from the garage back to the lanai, it was drying too fast in the garage.

I'm trying for a sucker crop with Tofta.

The LY plants in the red mulch aren't looking too good.

All of the large plants are Little Yellow, they are budding and will need to be topped soon.

32 degree difference here. 39 to 71 tomorrow.
Your plants are looking great as usual.

 

[wruk53]

Note to self: Topped LY down to an 8–10-inch leaf. Left one plant un-topped for seed. Average leaf count is about 6. Four to six leaves were primed from each plant before the storm.

 

[wruk53]

I cut out the fertilizer on the Little Yellow 12 days after topping. They should start ripening in the next few weeks. This crop of LY has done much better than the 2023 LY planting. I had a lot of brown spot in 2023 due to bad weather, or possibly stink bugs, or both, I'm not sure. I saw a lot of green stink bugs on the leaf in 23, hardly any this year.

The sucker crop of Tofta is looking okay so far.

The red mulch experiment in the blue buckets is pretty much a failure. They are about 6 weeks from transplant and still pretty small.

 

[manfisher]

How did the snus from the Little Yellow turn out? Worth growing you think?

 

[wruk53]

How did the snus from the Little Yellow turn out? Worth growing you think?

It turned out very good. It was the best single variety snus that I've made yet. It's a pretty heavy yielder with medium nicotine content and has a noticeable sweetness to it. It's well worth growing.

 

[manfisher]

It turned out very good. It was the best single variety snus that I've made yet. It's a pretty heavy yielder with medium nicotine content and has a noticeable sweetness to it. It's well worth growing.

I'm going to add that to my seed list for next year. We plan to buy a house in Alaska in the Spring so I am curious how it will grow up there

 

[wruk53]

I topped the stunted LY in the blue buckets this morning. The small plants in the fabric pots are the Tofta sucker crop.

The larger Little yellow will need to be primed soon. Looking at them from a distance you can tell they are getting lighter in color. It's been about 16 days since topping. The measurement of the leaf in the close-up is 18 X 12 inches. There are a few more that are larger, but I would put the average at about maybe 16 X 11 inches. The lamina is very thick on these.

 

[wruk53]

Primed 60 leaves from Little Yellow this morning at 3 weeks from topping. The 10-day forecast calls for high humidity and daytime temps in the mid-eighties.

My bagged plant has been blowing over, so I moved it inside the lanai and primed a few leaves from it also. It won't get any direct sunlight in this location. It should be alright for seed production, I think.

 

[wruk53]

Today is four weeks from topping Little Yellow. I've primed them 3 times so far and I plan on stalk harvesting the rest in a few days. The first priming has already been dried and bagged for aging, the second priming is the ones in the garage and the last from Saturday is still coloring on the lanai. LY has been one of the better yielding varieties I've grown so far.

The LY in the blue buckets and the Tofta sucker crop won't amount to much. The original planting of Tofta began flowering at only four weeks and the sucker crop did the same, so that variety is not suited for my methods or this part of the country. One or the other or maybe both.

 

[wruk53]

The bagged plant is done flowering, now to wait for the pods to mature and dry.
I'll probably harvest the remainder of the Little Yellow within the next 2 weeks.
The humidity has been swinging wildly from too low to very high, so I'm having to pile cure in a box to avoid flash drying green.
The leaf on the table has been color curing in a box for about 4 days. I'll string most of it up tomorrow.

 

[johnny108]

Now that is a Big leaf!
The only dark air I’ve grown to full size was One Sucker, and its leaves were long, but thin.
Small Stalk Black Mammoth leaves were pretty big, but dried down really small into something resembling a light grade of leather.

 

[wruk53]

It's been six weeks from topping Little Yellow. I plan on harvesting later today after the dew dries. Most of the leaves are mottled yellow and green. The RH will not be ideal over the next 2 weeks, so I'll prime them and yellow in a box.
The Tofta sucker crop looks about as good as the originals. It'll be a low yield though. Had an infestation of hornworms last week that mainly affected Tofta. I sprayed with BT in time to avoid major damage.
Little Yellow in the blue buckets had a lot of brown spot. I pruned off the worst looking leaves and discarded them.
My mutts foraging in the lawn. They find and eat all sorts of insects, caterpillars, etc. They seem to favor large beetles. They'll catch one and torment it to death over about a half hour, then eat it. Makes my skin crawl to hear them crunching it up.

 

[johnny108]

Dog logic:
Flies- sky raisin.
Bees- jalapeño sky raisin.
Beetle- crunchy candy coated sky raisin.