MAB 2019 (Prilep, Criollo and Costello)

[ChinaVoodoo]

And

China Voodoo 2018 Air-cured and Rajangan

He had diagonal light colored lines down his side. More cool stuff in Cold Lake: Maybe you can identify these guys.

fairtradetobacco.com

 

[MAB]

Hello everyone and sorry for the delay of the replies but I am so busy between tobacco,the horticulture, painting the house, the garden, etc.! Unfortunately, with the month of May so rainy, the work was piled up.

@ Bob: your idea is great but I was kidnapped by the ChinaVoodoo system in my head it will make me avoid a lot of work regarding the the final cut of the tobacco.

@ ChinaVoodoo: hi, a few years ago on HTGT a guy published a post with a similar but very vague procedure ... and I have always been brooding in my brain about how to do that treatment with cut tobacco.
But your post is really excellent! Thank you so much! I have now downloaded your post then I will translate it into Italian and I will study it this way next year I will try to put it into practice.
Thanks again, ChinaVoodoo :!

One bit update of my Log and I apologize immediately for the horrible images.

Sunday, July 21st, the 12th week in Garden for my plants is over.

During the 10th and 11th week after the transplant I have harvested the leaves of the lower part of the stalk for the Costello (I subdivide the leaves into three types: low stalk, medium stalk and top stalk).

The Prilep, I have harvested them by chance, as the leaves turn yellow and after they are cured, I put them all in a card-box, without any distinction regarding the area of the stalk where the leaves were attached.
Same thing for Criollo, but on Thursday 18 July I have picked the stalks of all seven plants and hung them up in the cellar to cure (I had eight Brussels sprout plants to be transplant in the Criollo soil).



So, on Sunday 21st July I finished curing the low-stalk leaves of Costello (now they are inside a card-box) and during the 12th week I did three rounds for harvesting the medium-stalk leaves of Costello, and here are the legs: - )





There are only a few leaves left of the average stalk to be harvested and I believe that this week I will finish the harvest, then it will be the turn of the top-stalk leaves.

See you soon

 

[MAB]

Update after the 13th Week in Garden



So, on Sunday 28th July, the 13th Garden Week for my plants ended. During the week I finished the harvest of the Mid-stalk leaves and I started some Top-stalk leaves. I believe that this week I will harvest the entire remaining Costello with a whole stem because I have an insect that is destroying my leaves:



I control the leaves at least 6 times a day but I couldn't find the worm that is eating the leaves like that, maybe it's a night bug? However, it is proving to be a disgrace worse than hail!

Curing Mid-stalk leaves
The yellowing of the Middle-stalk leaves is taking more than two days but for now it is progressing very well! This stack was opened on Friday 26 July and the leaves are harvested on Sunday 21 July:



In reality, the color is less bright, it is similar to these boxed leaves and then closed with cellophane and ready to go to the sun:





However, I still had about 25% of that pile with still green spots that turned yellow Tuesday, July 30, taking 9 days.

The drying of the leaf takes at most two days, but the majority if placed in the sun in the morning, in the evening have the central vein dried bone.
The final color is almost always a more or less dark hazel color, never yellow,



There is a huge difference compared to Virginia Gold :



although the leaves when they are yellow are of a very similar yellow.
Why doesn't the sun fix the color in the Costello Negro? I really don't know (maybe a question of starches and sugars?)

In the next update I will talk about Criollo and Prilep curing.

Bye Bye

 

[deluxestogie]

The patterns of damage on the two leaves shown suggest to me (in my garden) cricket damage, rather than hornworm or caterpillar damage. Caterpillars tend to leave holes with relatively smooth edges, while crickets tend to create jagged holes.

Bob

 

[Alpine]

Ha! Darn grasshoppers! I know them very well... the only thing you can do to get rid of them (well... to keep them in a reasonable amount) is keep the grass around the tobacco as low as possible, dig the garden in late autumn so that during winter the dirt freezes, and hope for some little birds to cooperate. Grasshoppers are nearly immune to insecticide, biological warfare is the only way.

Pier

 

[Charly]

I have a few of those creatures (crickets and grasshoppers) as well... they make big holes !

 

[MAB]

@ Bob:
Thanks Bob! In fact the garden is full of a kind of green crickets similar to grasshoppers, they resemble this one, it is called "tettigonia caudata":



Mine, they jump from one plant to another, I've captured some, but I don't think they're so voracious, otherwise I wouldn't have leaves for a long time. I also saw a few light brown crickets, but I saw it very rarely and they are really hard to catch.
Are your crickets : green or brown?

@ Pier:
Thanks Pier! Unfortunately,, besides the insect of the photo, I don't see any other insects, usually grasshoppers arrive here in autumn and have a gray-brown color. Now the second growth is starting and I hope to understand what the leaves eat.

@ Charly:
Thanks Charly! I have a few small holes in every leaf and also in the leaves of vegetables, but some tobacco leaves lacked almost half a leaf! Fortunately it happened at the end of cultivation!

Update after the 14th Week in Garden



Hello everyone!
Sunday, August 4th 2019, the 14th Garden Week for my plants is over. During the week, Thursday, in anticipation of a strong storm, I finished the harvest of the Top-stalk leaves of the Costello harvesting them with the whole stem hanging them in the cellar:



Usually, for me, the Top-stalk leaves are more difficult to cure by harvesting them leaf by leaf and bagging them, so I treat the Top-stalk leaves by hanging the stalk so that the leaf "dies" slowly without the risk of drying green or other issues.
But this year, those few top leaves that I harvested and bagged, they treated very well! Like the other leaves and perhaps better: a beautiful canary yellow - unfortunately I didn't take photos so you have to believe me on the word -..
So, now I have the temptation to remove the leaves as soon as the green clears and bagging them after washing them. All this is above all to have clean leaves, I hate having black, sticky fingers every time I handle the leaves.

A few words about Criollo

This is a strain that I had difficulty treating yellowing in the plastic bag, part of the leaf turned brown and "sweated" while other parts of the leaf were still green. And this is the typical result:



So, about three weeks ago, I decided to harvest the plants with the still stuck the Mid-stalk leaves and hang them in the cellar, also because I needed that space in the ground to transplant Brussels sprouts.
For now the cure in the cellar is going well, no signs of mold, hanging plants can be seen on the right in the previous image, that of Costello hanging in the cellar
And these are the first dry leaves stripped on Sunday:



The color is uniform, very different from the yellowed leaves in the plastic bag: this is a card-box with Low-stalk leaves and some Mid.stalk leaves:



I will speak in the next update of how I am treating the Prilep.
Bye Bye

 

[deluxestogie]

Are your crickets : green or brown?

I have brown crickets, but also larger, green grasshoppers. They are most likely to feed on tobacco if there is nearby, tall grass. Without the grass, I hardly see either of them.

Bob

 

[Moth]

A few words about Criollo

This is a strain that I had difficulty treating yellowing in the plastic bag, part of the leaf turned brown and "sweated" while other parts of the leaf were still green.

I found the same with Criollo. Faring much better without bags and just piles in cardboard.

 

[Moth]

Found the literature on this site mildly interesting. I think the bags cause "house burn" and the "yellow spots"
https://burleytobaccoextension.ca.uky.edu/curing-problems-0

 

[MAB]

@ Bob:
Yes, in fact the two areas where they ate are the side areas of the garden that border the wild area where nobody cuts the grass. However, for now on the new leaves of the second growth nothing is seen yet, I hope it continues like this!

@ Moth:
Thanks for the Link! Very interesting! In fact, the dark leaf tobaccos seem to need less moisture than the brightleaf leaves: I had simply cured hanging in the basement (about 70% humidity) of the dark green leaves of a Burley Mississippi Heirloom and they looked after very well:





In the same position, many Virginia tended to dry light green.
I didn't think of curing the Criollo in the cellar, the fact is that I really neglected the Criollo !.

 

[MAB]

Hi everyone, how long I won't update the blog! In truth, there was nothing to add, for almost a month and a half I almost never took care of the tobacco: the stalk with Top Leaves were in the cellar to cure, while the second growth is proving to be a flop!
Here is the distressing spectacle after a month and a half of second growth, the strain is Costello:





Indeed, some plants have dried out:



Card-box Storage
During the last week, I stripped the plants hanging in the cellar and put the leaves in the sun to dry the central vein of the leaf.
All three varieties looked well, only a hint of mold on some flower capsules, and now the whole crop is dry inside the card-boxes.

These are the Criollo Top-stalk leaves:



These are Costello's Top-stalk leaves:



These are the Prilep Top-stalk leaves:



Harvest of the Prilep
The Prilep was harvested in an anomalous way for me: when I saw some leaves turning yellow I picked them up.





So, in some cases I came to harvest more than half a plant and still hadn't bloomed! But what could I do? If I left the leaves on the plant they would have deteriorated, because in a short time a part of the yellowed leaves dried up and crumbled / crushed, making me lose the leaf.

See you at the next update, I hope the second growth takes off now that it's cooler!

 

[deluxestogie]

I hope the second growth takes off

Hope springs eternal.

Your boxed top leaves look excellent, especially the box of Prilep.

Bob

 

[MAB]

Hello everyone! I haven't updated the Log for a long time but I wouldn't have had much to tell. So, on Monday 4th November, after 14 weeks of cultivation, I harvested the entire second growth ... Well, to call it growth and harvest is a huge word because nothing has grown. Here is the desolation before the harvest:



Weighing Costello Negro
It was really a poor season, looking at the garden I already knew that I would have had little harvest, but instead it was even less than I thought!
I have already cut and bagged the Costello for storage, which I obtained from 43 plants, only 2,225 Kg. (4.90 pounds) gross of tobacco, an average slightly less than 52 gr. (1.83 ounces) per plant.
So, when the central vein of the leaf is removed, I will have 1.726 Kg. (3.80 pounds) of tobacco ready for smoking.



The 2018 season gave me 4.531 Kg. (10 pounds) of Virginia Gold tobacco ready for smoking!


The surprising thing is that this Costello is ready to smoke: it has no herbaceous taste, no funky taste, it has a mild taste of tobacco and is as light as nicotine, as I like it.


Weighing Cuban Criollo 98
This strain went even worse: from seven plants I got only 189 grams gross (6.66 ounces), an average just under 27 grams (0.95 ounces) per plant.
It doesn't really matter since I cultivated this strain out of curiosity, to make a couple of cigars and to mix it with Virginia or Costello.

Prilep
As for the Prilep, it is still all inside the card-box, I have to decide whether to pull out the central vein or cut it as it is ... the leaves are so small and so many that I believe I will go crazy in pulling the central vein.


Now the little second growth is hanging with the stem to cure, and my next goal is to learn how to make cigars!

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

You have more tobacco than you started with, so I say you won!

I don't think Criollo is a very big plant relative to many other cigar varieties.

 

[Charly]

You did a good job
Some years are better than others, and next year you may do it even better than last year

 

[MAB]

Thanks guys for moral support!

@ ChinaVoodoo:
yes, I agree, Criollo does not seem a very productive strain in any case, and the place that it has occupied into the garden is not the best place ... these are the Brussels sprouts that are occupying the same place of Criollo:



And like Criollo grew: vigorous in the middle of the row and struggling at the beginning and at the end of the row.

@ Charly:
I suppose I should have watered a lot more, it was a very hot summer and all the plants that have not been watered have produced very little: very few plums, very few nuts, no figs!


Last works in the garden and last photo :



The last jobs were to pull the stalk and the roots from the ground, I made a quick digging of the hole and then covered it with cardboard so in spring I will find the hole even if the grass grows very high

Prilep

I started devening and cutting Prilep, they are the last harvested leaves and therefore the smallest leaves.



Well, I was desperate enough to make those little leaves! Then, by chance, I discovered a different way from the traditional method of devening the leaf and now it is much less tiring and very fast!

So, instead of pulling out one side of the leaf from the tip, I grab both sides of the leaf with my thumb and forefinger starting from the petiole and sliding my thumb and forefinger downwards and the vein remains almost clean!



I'm almost sure that what I wrote, with my bad English, is incomprehensible! But if someone wants to know more about this way I'll try to write better

Finally, I rolled a cigarette from a beautiful golden leaf of Prilep, and ... ohhhhh, this is the best smoke I've smoked !! Really a wonderful taste !!
The bad news is that it was so heavy that I managed to inhale only three times, coughing as if I were smoking a strong cigar!
I hope it was an apical top leaf and that when I mix all the tobacco is not so strong and heavy!

 

[Leftynick]

I have been following your grow log from HTGT. It is nice to see you here. Keep up the good work.

 

[MAB]

@ Leftynick: Thanks! Very nice! and congratulations for the Telecaster


Prilep weighing
Today I finished cutting the Prilep and so I weighed it:
The 30 plants produced 513 gr. (1.13 pounds) gross weight of tobacco; 428 gr. net weight, about a pound ready for smoking.
Also for this strain, like the Orientals, the mid rib is lighter than the classical varieties, only 16.57% of the leaf, Costello was 22.39%.
In conclusion, the average gross weight per plant was 17.10 gr. (0.60 oz) .. really a pittance!



However, if I think that in the place of the Prilep I usually put 5 Virginia that I get from them on average 550 gr. (1.21 pounds) on balance the little Prilep turned out to be the strain that went best!

I hope I haven't messed with the translation from grams to ounces!