Posting some pictures of my Mapacho plants. They are so beautiful I love them. If you ever decide to grow them please be careful with slags they love them very much I had to really fight them hard.

Also I would like to ask when and how do I harvest and dry them? I do not have any experience with it.

Awesome pics! They look really healthy. How old?

I have one cutting that I planted in the garden a month or so ago, and I'm not seeing much growth.

Thank you , they must be around 3 months old cant remember exactly when I seeded them but they took very long time to grow. I thought they would never get bigger but they just started growing fast. Also I have some plants in little greenhouse and the rest outside and those in greenhouse grow much faster. All depends where you are. Im in UK so the weather was quite cold here for them till now.

Just be patient with them I guess. Once they establish them self they start growing like mad. If you want and can , post some pictures here. I will update again once they grow bigger.

I red they should be harvested once the leafs start to go a bit yellow. Do you have any experience with them at all ?

beautiful, i have a 2 foot mapacho plant myself. ill post pics when i have the time.

thanks for sharing.

Thanks, yes please do Id love to see them

Nice looking plants. How do you dry and cure once mature and harvested?

that is a very good question I have never done it my self before but here is what I found on another forum.

Pick up the leaves when they start to turn a little yellow. It doesn't matter that much but the process is little faster with yellowing leaves. First you must dry the leaves for a while but leave them a little moist. If they go cracker dry just spray some water on them.

Additionally you can flavour them with rum, Coke, whiskey... Dilute some flavouring in water. Then stick them inside a ziplock bag. Don't pack too full. I would say two layers of leaves max. Then the ziplock bag is left to a hot place like inside a car on a dashboard for example. The bag must be opened and aired out daily.

I once put fresh leaves in a bag and they got moldy in a couple of days!

Leaves will ferment on their own if they are kept moist but the process is much faster inside a ziplock. You can tell they are ready when the smell of ammonia is gone. Tobacco leaves will express some ammonia when they are fermenting. Actually it's excrete of bacteria that are converting the carbohydrates of the leaves to sugars. Color of leaves is changing from green or yellow to brown as well. They do sweat a lot some times and then the airing becomes much more important.

The aroma of completely fermented homegrown Nicotiana is very sophisticated! At first fermenting not a simple process but once you master the time, temperature, FAE, flavouring, etc you can start making your own experiments with different flavourings or longer fermenting times and so on.

If the smoke is still harsh after fermenting there's propably some ammonia left and the leaves should be fermented a little longer.

More Info I found

HARVESTING AND CURING

Due to the needs for proper harvesting and curing tobacco, there is very little home or garden production of tobacco for personal use. Another deterrent to home production of tobacco is the need to age the cured tobacco for one to three years or longer. The following suggestions are not based on any experience or research information, but are only the opinion of the writer. However, some producers of home-grown leaf have developed harvesting and curing techniques that are satisfactory for them and often they share their experiences with others.

Tobacco may be cured with heat added or it may be air cured. There does not appear to be any practical means for the gardener to use heat to cure the tobacco because of the facilities that are required. Again, some producers of home-grown tobacco have built curing facilities and may offer them for sale. Tobacco could be cured without heat if a building with good air circulation is available. Temperatures for air curing may range from 60-65°F up to 90-95°F, and the relative humidity of the air should be about 65-70 percent. Proper curing should take a few weeks in order to have good quality. Tobacco that cures too fast will be green and not have good aroma and flavor, while mold or rot may develop if curing is slow. A building that can be opened and closed as needed to control the relative humidity and drying rate is desirable. Curing procedures need to be developed for individual situations.

Harvesting could be accomplished by either removing leaves from the stalk in the field and curing them or by cutting the stalk off at ground level and hanging the entire stalk in the curing facility for the leaves to cure. The leaves would then be removed from the stalk after they have cured. If the leaves are removed in the field, there should be four or five harvests at intervals of 1-2 weeks, starting with the lower leaves. The first harvest would be at or soon after topping and when the leaves show a slight yellowing. If the entire stalk is cut for curing, it should be about 3-4 weeks after topping. The lower leaves would be partially deteriorated at this time. Provide adequate space between stalks to allow for satisfactory drying of the leaves.

another link how to cure tobacco

hang plants in sun, get good wilt.
hang plants in barn, let them hang till totally yellow and are fairly dry to touch.
wait till a good rain when leaves are semi pliable.
remove leaves and some vein. Make a Q out of about 7 leaves. stems oppose one another.
twist leaves as you tie the ends for the Q
hang in rafters and forget about them. Most types will be brown before long if not already.

we did that for some time.

Of course we had large area to do this sorta thing. I imagine indoors or for you more domestic types a paper grocery bag could do a pretty good job of keeping humidity high and still breathing. Open it more or remove leaves as needed to prevent mold.

enjoy.
Rw

Thank you for that but I did not get some of it. would it be possible to explain it more detailed. I underlined the parts I did not get. sorry to be pain I actually thought that my english was very good


hang plants in sun, get good wilt.
hang plants in barn, let them hang till totally yellow and are fairly dry to touch.
wait till a good rain when leaves are semi pliable.
remove leaves and some vein-if you remove leaves nothing will be left there
Make a Q out of about 7 leaves. - what is Q ?
stems oppose one another.
twist leaves as you tie the ends for the Q - again Q
hang in rafters and forget about them.- don know what rafter is
Most types will be brown before long if not already.
we did that for some time.

Of course we had large area to do this sorta thing. I imagine indoors or for you more domestic types a paper grocery bag could do a pretty good job of keeping humidity high and still breathing. Open it more or remove leaves as needed to prevent mold.

remove leaves and some vein-if you remove leaves nothing will be left there
Remove leaves from the plant. Remove as much stem as possible. This includes leaf stem.

Make a Q out of about 7 leaves. - what is Q ?
"Q" is a letter. look at how it's formed. You lay the leaves end to end, roll them and twist into a long roll... take to ends and tie them together, it forms a "Q"

hang in rafters and forget about them.- don know what rafter is
Rafter is a roof support inside a barn or house.


Anyhow, I told you how we've done it many times for many many years, with several type of tobaccum and rustica. We've also done fire cure, and many other forms of curing tobacco. Perhaps I'm not seeing this correctly, but I'm perceiving you as being an incredible smart ass, and as such am not really interested in talking about this anymore. I apologize if I'm in error.

good luck,
Rw

Thank you my friend for taking your time and explaining it to me. I was not joking around I really never heard about leafs in Q shape or the other stuff I asked about.

I only want to know as much as I can about it before I harvest leafs. I have to also say that I quit smoking tobacco around 4 years ago

If I do it right at the end I want to make some nice smoking blends with that tobacco kind of experiment with it a bit. My sisters and mum are heavy smokers so this way if they have to smoke they will at least smoke some quality stuff not that shit you buy in tobacco shops.

Will see how it goes but thanks again brother for helping me and Im sure not just me, there will more people to learn from your experience

well that is just one way. It is a simple way to deal with under 100 plants. I learned this way from some folks in Kentucky and I like it. It's nice too because a Q of tobacco is a small amount, thus easy to process as needed vs trying to process so much at one time.
Here in Georgia, they do Tobacco barns, tightly stuffed and fire cured.

The main thing with really good curing is to not dry the leaf... also to not let it mold. You are essentially just trying to let it rest. This way the curing process goes slow, there will be times when humidity is very heavy and it'll help to air out the place.
This is why for small amount paper bags work well. Very easy to keep humid, very easy to handle and get them a lil drier if need be.

As far as replacing pre rolled cigs with home grown tobacco, I dunno how that'll work out. It's a different creature. If they are interested tho, many of my fellow smokers stuff their own via a machine. $2.50 buys ya 275 tubes with filters, very easy to make a pack.

The biggest problem you'll have is cutting the tobacco into a fine cig type cut. Pressing tobacco into a block and making a cutter isn't hard, but it'll take some fine tuning to get a good cut.

This year, locally they have planted 100x more tobacco than in previous years to meet the demand of the Chinese. But remember, tobacco is an allotment crop. you are only allowed to grow 1/10 of an acre without goverment permission.

If you are after good leaf production, remember to keep the plant topped, and continue removing the suckers (new flower sprouts). From a personal note tho the flowers make an excellent smoke and are very potent.
For different tobacco types, try JL Hudson. He's got some nice ones, I like the small stalk black mammoth. It's a nice grower with good leaf.

New pics

great thread! great pictures, WONDERFULLY HEALTHY plants.

Beautiful reflection upon yourself. Its obvious that there has been much love and care bestowed upon those beautiful plants.

Thank You!!

IH

Thank you guys for your nice words I really do appreciate it a lot.

Yes Ice House I love my plants. It is difficult here in UK in this terrible weather (specially this year) to grow them but I think they are doing well at least those six I have in my little green house. The rest of them is not doing so well but they are growing. The slugs are really BIG problem here. I had to kill so many of them unfortunately Sorry guys

I only hope I will get the curing right. I think I know what to do now. If anyone has any experience please do not hesitate and post it here.

I will keep posting pictures and hopefully the last one will be with nice beautifully brown tobacco

some new pictures

If you want to continue with leaf production you need to top the plants. (ie remove flower stalks).

The flowers make a good smoke btw.
good luck,
rw

Thanks RW I was thinking to harvest the whole plant and just hang it upside down in my little shed and let them cure that way. Would that be ok ? I know about the technique you told me about but it is really more difficult for me because I simply do not have enough space to hang all the leafs separately. So my plan is hang the whole plants to let them dry, when the leaves are nice brown but not too dry I would harvest them , then roll them few together and put them in paper bag to cure properly.

I will post some pictures of the first experiment with few leafs I have done already.

what do you think ?

yeah, better to hang whole plant.

looks good, you'll enjoy the heck outta a fine rustica smoke