are these healthy leaves? ready for priming?

[jason30809]

This is suppose to be TN86 and it is my first time growing it. This is my second season of growing tobacco in general but last time I grew a Virginia variety. My first question is, are these lower leaves healthy? The spotting is what makes me ask this question. The fact that it is most pronounced on the lowest leaves and working its way up makes me think it may be normal ripening and though I'm not certain, I know some of you will be. Some of the plants in these few pictures were topped 3 weeks ago. Some were topped a week ago and some were only topped in the last two or three days. As I understand it, TN86 is suppose to be ready for priming 3-5 weeks after topping but as I said, some of these pictures are from plants that were just topped a few days ago and whose leaves already looked this way a week or two before topping. So I guess my question is rather or not these are normal healthy leaves and if so, are the lower and most yellowed and alligatored leaves ready to be pulled for air curing? If they are not healthy, what if anything should I do about it? Thanks guys.

P.S. I have studied pics of plants that are ready for priming but I'm just not certain or comfortable making this judgment call.

 

[deluxestogie]

Those lower leaves seem to show normal ripening, plus a few speckles of ozone damage (weather fleck). You could certainly prime them individually now. Burley is often simply stalk-cut and stalk-cured, once the top leaves begin to show adequate maturation.

The timing of topping vs. ripening is a statistical approach to harvesting acres of tobacco. Individual plants don't understand statistics, and may vary quite a lot from the average.

Bob

 

[jason30809]

Thanks. I will go ahead and start priming and hanging.