Tag Archives: home grown tobacco

Growing Tobacco, Useful Information

Growing Tobacco

Germinating tobacco seeds is the hardest part of growing tobacco.

Once your plants leaves are 6 inches in size, they are ready to be planted outside.

Plant outside only after all danger of frost has past. Care should be taken not to disturb the roots. Feed should only be given to established and rapidly growing plants after they have been replanted.Here is a collection of articles on how to grow tobacco; from germinating tobacco seeds, planting, harvesting, curing and seed storage.

Ideally, space the tobacco plants about 2 ft. apart in rows 3 ft. apart. Transplant outside in the evening or when it is cloudy and overcast to avoid the youngsters from drying out. Water plants thoroughly after transplanting and water daily until plants become established. Like tomato plants, the branches (suckers, offshoots), should be removed to focus the plants energy on the large leaves.

Tobacco plants generally require full to partial sun to grow properly. Tobacco is ready to be harvest after 60-90 days after planting.

Growing Tobacco, Useful Information

What Are Heirlooms & Hybrids

These old-fashioned types of tobacco, commonly referred to as Heirloom, have been around for many decades and carry with them some interesting names we know little about. Heirloom types are the main varieties found on this site. They are pure in a sense that their genetic characteristics have not been modified over time through cross pollination with other types. As a true breed, if you were to grow one hundred plants, there would be little difference between one and another. Also, were you to collect the seeds from one of these and grew them the following year, you’d get very similar results.

By contrast, there are also a mind boggling number of hybrids, which often have coded names. These are varieties which have been produced by cross breeding one type of tobacco with another to produce a new variety. It’s what modern day tobacco farmers grow. Hybrids pertain to contain the most favorable characteristics of tobacco, whilst keeping out unwanted features.

If you were to grow one hundred hybrid tobacco plants, there would, as with Heirlooms, be little difference between one and another. However, were you to collect the seeds from one of these and grew them the following year, there would be little similarity between them. The seeds will produce plants resembling one or the other parent or both, but there will be considerable variations between them.

So with heirloom seeds, you buy these once and can grow them forever after. Hybrids are grown once, and each year you need to buy fresh seeds to avoid them turning back into their more primitive state.

There are benefits and drawbacks associated with each type.

In the end it boils down to personal taste and ones’ point of view.

You’ll find many heirloom varieties on this site, and more hybrids on our parent site The Tobacco Seed Company.

Useful Information

Is Home Grown Tobacco Safer?

Smoking home grown tobacco is probably as bad for you as any other tobacco, give or take an ounce or two.

Does this surprise you, coming for a company that promotes the sale of tobacco seeds and DIY tobacco in general?

It shouldn’t. Those of you who know us over the years know we’re an honest bunch. We don’t exploit the smoking community by giving false hopes about the health merits of homegrown tobacco. There are benefits, but unfortunately, living a longer life is not one of them.

We made a lot of fuss in the early years, when we discovered what the major tobacco manufacturers were putting into their tobacco products.  It was scandalous and we wanted to expose it.

In the USA, there are over 2,000 natural and unnatural additives put into tobacco, either to help you get a better kick, to make it taste nicer (so you can smoke more than you would otherwise ) or simply to help it burn better. The full list is quite disturbing to see. Ammonium Hydroxide, Chocolate and Sugar are just 3 of these.

Such revelations made it an easy selling point for us and others, which helped to raise seed sales and popularize the home grown tobacco industry in general.

And now there is an established home growers community, have people been mislead into thinking that home grown types of tobacco is healthier than existing types bought in shops?

Many smokers think that it is these other ingredients that are the root cause of problems commonly associated with smoking, maybe it is. Home grown tobacco, which is purer and unadulterated is better for you…or should we say less harmful. Whilst there maybe an ounce of truth in this point of view, the truth is tobacco is a very poisonous plant. It kills and causes untold health related problems. If only growing your own tobacco was the answer to this problem. It is not.

We would be lying if we said that by smoking your own tobacco,  you can avoid getting the dreaded diseases commonly associated with smoking. There is no evidence of this whatsoever, so let’s not make the same mistake as our forefathers and assume everything in this crazy world is okay until proven otherwise. We, as pioneers, don’t wish to be ridiculed by future generations, if it transpired that home growers had exposed themselves to even higher levels of risk through smoking their own tobacco.

We home-growers simply do not have the means or resources to check these theories out, so it will take maybe 50 years or more before there is any conclusive evidence.

The only benefits of making your own tobacco are these:

  • It’s cheaper
  • It’s cleaner
  • It’s new and interesting
  • It gets you out of the house more
  • And, it makes a great hobby!