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Post by cornhusker007 on Jul 15, 2015 19:01:09 GMT -5
Ive got a good stand of tobacco coming on. My only problem is I have absolutely no idea how to harvest, dry or cure tobacco. I have Virginia gold, havana, Kentucky brown and four turkish plants. Any ideas welcome. I was thinking of sun drying the Turkish as a whole plant and bundling the rest by the leaf.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 15, 2015 23:12:21 GMT -5
I grow tobacco. I am totally disconnected from the social/cultural traditions of growing tobacco. (I think they're dumb.) Therefore, I treat tobacco like any other herb that I harvest and dehydrate: Pick the leaves, or the plant, and hang it in the shed to dry. No fermenting or curing for me. The climate is wrong to even attempt something like that. Then I take it down and crumble it after it is dry.
I prefer drying individual leaves, which I harvest as a leaf or two every few days starting at the bottom of the plant. If I hang a whole plant up, the stem keeps growing and trying to make a flower, and it takes a long time to dehydrate. Even individual leaves take a long time, because they have a waxy coating so they hold onto the moisture well. I suppose that if you are harvesting a lot of it, wear gloves. The wax on the leaves seems dangerous to me.
Even though I prefer to dry individual leaves, I feel like whole plants make better gifts to the shaman and medicine women.
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Post by reed on Jul 16, 2015 8:48:18 GMT -5
Around here they cut it in the fall after it starts to turn yellow and shove it on sticks driven into the ground. You set a spear on top of the stick and shove through the stalk, about 5 to 7 stalks to a stick. Then after it sets in the field and wilts for a few days you go out and load it on a wagon and take it to the barn, then you climb up it the tears and hand it up from the wagon and hang the sticks across the tears starting of course at the top. All stages cover you with the sticky tars that it oozes. After it dries in the barn for a couple months or so you wait till it rains or gets humid to bring it into case, a stage where you can handle it without to much crumbling. Then you take it to the stripping room and strip and sort the grades. The stripping room is often heated with a little wood stove and full of choking dust. At least that's how they used to do it. I was excellent at cutting, earning as much as a nickel a stick (some time ago). One time in haste a stick bowed as I shoved a stalk on, recoiled and threw the spear into my chin where it stuck. Didn't mind hanging as I had no fear of the top tears so nothing fell on me.
I think some of the procedures have changed, in any event, I don't miss it.
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Post by RpR on Jul 21, 2015 10:46:50 GMT -5
Has anyone here ever smoked the type of tobacco that the Indians used.
I quit smoking many decades ago but I have always had a hankering to try that stuff once.
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