Experience with growing tobacco?

I am wondering if anyone here grows tobacco, and has any experience with different methods of curing. Also, what is the best time to pick the leaves for drying.

I have been doing lots of research, but there is a lot of conflicting info out there.

I am growing a variety called Scherazi, and I want to use it for cigarettes (I hardly ever smoke- I know it's bad for me.) and I will probably make flower essence from the flowers. This also leaves me the conflict of whether or not to top the plants. I will have to decide very soon. Thanks for any help!

Joan

http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S10875&q=+tobacco

From morningstar Essences:

Scherazi Tobacco (flower essence)

Excellent for both Shamanistic journeying and breaking addictions associated with Shamanistic practices in past lives/ Powerful Crown chakra opener. Stimulates dream and visions.

Click to expand...

you might try calling your local or nearest 'county extension agent'. they are usually associated with a university and can give you all kinds of help, including when it's best to harvest tobacco in your area. ( i googled and found that maryland has one in every county.)

It doesn't grow in Wisconsin, unfortunately. I never saw the plant itself until I took a trip south of Illinois--looked into a field & had no idea what kind of crop they were raising, the stuff looked so STRANGE!

There must be something online about it though, you'd think?

My family in Tennessee actually grow tobacco on the farm. I don't know much about it but I remember my brother telling me they would make him him cut, hang then roll it. It is very hard work.

That would seem to be the bulk of their crop now, ( I only remembered the peanuts from when I was little.)

they grow it in my neck of the woods, but i never had tried it. imo, it looks like overgrown swiss chard.

joan, if you are concerned about conflicting info, i would go with the folks at rodale press (assuming that you are an organic gardener) or with the lovely folks at seeds of change.

rodale has been gardening organic at least since the 50's and are very up to date on new methods and discoveries.

Thank you for all the replies! I have called the "extension" before about bugs, and suprisingly found them extremely UNhelpful.
I am organic in my gardening methods, and I will look up rodale press.
The area where I live has been a major tobacco producing area for a long time, but much less so in recent years. I know that for the big farms, it takes a long time and a lot of labor to harvest the plants. I am only growing 5 plants in my herb garden, so I don't think it will take me that long!

I think I will pick about half of the leaves this week (hopefully it's not too late), but leave a few plants undesturbed so that I can make essence from the flowers. I still have to decide on a curing method. (The flowers look so cool! They are square!) I will post some pics later...

Joan

Here are some pics. It turns out the first flower (square shaped) was an anomoly. The rest are star-shaped. Very cool flowers, but not as highly scented as promised. THey don't smell like much of anything. I did find some good sites with accurate (hopefully) info. I will start picking the leaves soon. Apparantly it's ok if they flower, and I can cut the flower stalks off later for more foliage growth. I guess I'll learn through trial and error.

Square Tobacco Flower

Scherazi Tobaco

These look great jlbvt~! I'm hoping we can share some at SWAT, as mentioned in the chat room!!!

I dried a few leaves already, and it smells just like a cigar! It must be the right stuff...
It got a little mold on it though, so I will be more careful with the next bunch. It's really humid in the summer here.

edited to add: only the top leaf had mold the rest are fine! It was like dry little black spots around the bottom of the leaf. I have thrown that leaf away, the rest look fine. I smelled tham, and they do have a more delicate sweet smell than a regular cigar. Hmmm.
I'm not going to turn back into a smoker though TDEV)- this is just for special occasions!

I've only just seen this thread.

My Dad used to grown tobacco in the back garden when I was a teenager.
He used to let the leaves grow fairly big, take the upper leaves and bunch them together on wires and then hang them to dry on lines that used to be strung up in the garage. When the leaves are dry they are translucent but not over dry or brittle. Not sure how long this takes but the next stage is taking the centre stem of the leaf out, spent hours doing this with Dad lol, so you have just the leaf and not the woody stem.

Next stage is the blocking of the tobacco. The leaves have to be sandwiched together very tightly and a resin is used, painted onto each leaf and placed on top of each other. i think Dad used to use glucose at first but later the club he was in recommended something else and he used that too but I'm not sure what it was called. He also used to spray with a flavour sometimes.

Anyway they go into wooden molds like big flower presses, nothing fancy just to make thick block of tobacco, pressed very tightly together and baked in a biscuit tin in a very low oven for hours. It seemed to be 3 or 4 hours but it could have been alot longer. The whole house would smell of baking tobacco. Not sure if they were left in the wooden mold or taken out to do the oven baking.

Anyway the blocks of tobacco would be left to cool and that would be it. Dad grew tobacco for years until he gave up smoking, the tobacco he grew was for pipe smoking but I know there were other variaties around.

Edited to add:-

Dad used to take the flowers out to make the leaves grow bigger. And we had the Police call often in the growing season just to see what was hanging in the garage lol - They used to go away with gifts of Dad's tobacco.