Deluxestogie Grow Log 2025

[deluxestogie]

Here we are, one week after the above photo of Havana 322 (NP) in the corner bed below my front porch. The plant has begun to grow. Following days of intermittent rain and drizzle, all of the slug bait has dissolved and vanished. The tiny slugs that share my property celebrated on this poor plant. I'm out of slug bait, and would prefer not purchasing more, just for this one plant. I located a length of very heavy copper wire and, with considerable effort, bent it into a circle.

We'll see how well this works. Since the electro-chemical muscle contraction process of a slug is outside its body, and bathed in its slime, the copper short-circuits it, and causes them...emotional...distress. In a previous grow, I tried this with several rings of copper pennies encircling the plant, and it seemed effective. But at the end of that season, gathering all the filthy pennies from the dirt was tedious.

Bob

 

[adamziegler]

Slugs are not a heavy problem here, but i thought I lost one plant to slug like damage this year. Thankfully it has snapped back and has new growth.

 

[deluxestogie]

All it took was two drifting, dead leaves to create bridges over the copper.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

It's been 18 days since I transplanted seedlings to this bed, and covered it with Agribon AG-15.

After carefully removing a multi-day cache of coyote poop from the corner of the fabric, I lifted away the cover (and quarantined it in a sealed, plastic bag, for disposal).

I think they look pretty good for 18 days of complete neglect. There is even a volunteer tomato plant (unknown variety) emerging in the far right corner of the bed. Tomorrow, I'll weed and hoe the bed (and maybe put out my additional tobacco plants), with rain expected the following day.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

This afternoon, I put 2 Lancaster Seedleaf and 3 Prilep 66-9/7 into the far end of the garden bed. I cleaned baby suckers from the 14 other tobacco plants. I unfortunately lapsed into a weeding frenzy, on my hands and knees, working out in the 87°F heat (high humidity) for way too long for these old bones. There are still more weeds and grass that needs to be dealt with. [Everything is wet with dew until about lunch time, but by the time it dries, it's too hot to spend much time in the garden.]

I'm sitting on the porch now, sucking down ice water. If it doesn't rain this evening, I'll return to the garden and get a photo.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Yesterday, shortly after transplanting the 5 tobacco plants to the garden bed, and while I was sitting out on the front porch, the wind direction changed. It came from the north-northwest—out of West Virginia. The smell of the air abruptly changed. I smelled a combination of sulfurous coal dust, stale conifer smoke and bloated road-kill. The air beneath the clouds became hazy. This lasted for about 20 minutes, as rain swept in. Then my air suddenly cleared of its haze, and smelled normal again.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Eight Havana 322 (NP) in the foreground, followed by 4 Lancaster seedleaf visible, and 2 more beneath the Agribon cover. Three Prilep 66-9/7 are beneath the far edge of the cover.

View from the opposite end:

View of the bed from my lawn chair beneath a pear tree:

This all seems rather quaint. Earlier today, I was scrolling through a couple of my old sets of photos from grows in 2011 and 2012. Here are the tobacco garden folders on my computer:

Many of these folders contain 300 to 500 photos. My earliest two grows (2010 and 2011) were shared on the now extinct website, howtogrowtobacco.com. All the others are on this forum. Some were insanely large grows (for me), and others more modest. The size of the grows peaked in the 2012-2015 years.

I was surprised at how much the rest of my yard, and my various fruit and nut trees, had changed over those 16 years of photos.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

This afternoon, I uncovered the tobacco transplants that went into the ground 5 days ago.

Three Prilep 66-9/7 up front, with two Lancaster seedleaf behind them (toward the right), along with a rogue, volunteer tomato. In the next day or so, I'll transfer that tomato to a veggie bed with a tomato cage. Beyond the rocks are the Lancaster seedleaf that I transplanted 25 days ago.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

That rogue tomato has been expelled from my tobacco bed, and transported to a veggie location, even though it was born in the very spot from which I removed it. It was a heated encounter. 89°F in high humidity. The uprooted tomato completely wilted within minutes of being replanted. I went back to the house, and brought out a pitcher of water, which was less work than hauling out the garden hose. As soon as I had watered the area surrounding the transplanted tomato, my eyeglasses slipped off my sweaty face, and landed in the newly created mud. I'm presently seated on my porch, sipping ICE water.

Bob

 

[plantdude]

That rogue tomato has been expelled from my tobacco bed, and transported to a veggie location, even though it was born in the very spot from which I removed it. It was a heated encounter. 89°F in high humidity. The uprooted tomato completely wilted within minutes of being replanted. I went back to the house, and brought out a pitcher of water, which was less work than hauling out the garden hose. As soon as I had watered the area surrounding the transplanted tomato, my eyeglasses slipped off my sweaty face, and landed in the newly created mud. I'm presently seated on my porch, sipping ICE water.

Bob

Uh oh, better be careful Bob. There can be misconstrued meanings in your last post. Expelling rogue "tomatoes", "transporting to veggie locations" even though it was "born in the spot from which I removed it", "heated encounters"... Especially with the word "ICE" capitalized. Oh my...

My understanding is we do try to maintain a policy of no political views on this forum

 

[deluxestogie]

Yup. I confess. I'm pro-tomato.

Bob

 

[plantdude]

Yup. I confess. I'm pro-tomato.

Bob

You have confirmed my worst suspicions

I've been blessed with about 6 volunteer tomatoes coming up randomly around the yard this year myself, which is great since a few of my planted ones didn't make it. They'll probably just be cherry tomatoes but I'll take them.

 

[deluxestogie]

The only volunteer garden plants that I have truly cursed aloud (with really naughty language) are dill and coriander. Dormant dill seeds continued to pup-up for over a decade after I had foolishly planted some.

Coriander (non-toxic, but invasive)
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Apiales
Family: Apiaceae
Genus: Coriandrum
Species: sativum

Dill (non-toxic, but invasive):
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Apiales
Family: Apiaceae
Genus: Anethum
Species: graveolens

Hemlock (toxic and invasive):
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Apiales
Family: Apiaceae
Genus: Conium
Species: maculatum

Bob

 

[plantdude]

I'd ask why you were growing hemlock to begin with, but some questions are probably best left unasked.
A little dab of it amongst the carrots and cilantro will keep your botany skills sharp at any rate I suppose.

 

[deluxestogie]

Seriously, hemlock is a widely spread weed throughout North America. Locally, I can observe it in any unmaintained patch of ground (like behind the local post office).

Exotic Species: Poison Hemlock (U.S. National Park Service)

www.nps.gov

Bob

 

[TigerTom]

It's all over along the part of the American River where I fish, practically forming thickets. I'm teaching my kids what it and other members of the carrot family look like so they can avoid them. It's too easy to confuse tasty herbs with some of the deadliest plants around.

 

[plantdude]

We have a fine leaved varitey of delphinium in our area. I'm not sure if it's native or not but it comes up like a weed around our yard some years.

Cilantro/coriander can be a bit much in spring so I moved some out of our garden to the side of our yard to make space for regular garden plants. It was late spring and my wife had collected some cilantro from the secondary areas outside the garden where the cilantro was starting to bolt and develop finer leaves. I got to looking at it before chopping it up for dinner one night and realized some of the leaves looked slightly different. I went out and and looked at the cilantro patch and realized some of the fine leaved delphinium was growing among it. Surprised me. Glad I checked and we didn't eat it. Probably wouldn't have been enough to kill us, but was a good reminder to always check things carefully.
The marriage is good so I don't think she was trying to off me - my least favorite dog has always got to sample my food first since then though. Kidding about that last part... Right...

 

[deluxestogie]

When I consider the number of distinct plants on earth (or even in just my yard), most of them try their best not to be eaten by something (or me) prior to their producing offspring. I compare that vast catalog to the paltry number of edible plants. With regard to my ability to identify what is safe to consume, I have to remind myself that I'm not as skilled at that as I think I am.

Of the vast number of mushroom species, there are only approximately 100 that are toxic. There are about 6000 ingestions annually in the United States. Of these, over half of the exposures are in children under six years. Most poisonings exhibit symptoms only of gastrointestinal upset, which is a common feature across several toxidromes and is most likely to occur with ingestions of small quantities of toxic mushrooms. Severe poisonings, when they take place, are primarily a consequence of misidentification by adults foraging for wild mushrooms who consume them as a food source.​

Mushroom Toxicity - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf

Bob

 

[GreenDragon]

...I went out and and looked at the cilantro patch and realized some of the fine leaved delphinium was growing among it. Surprised me. Glad I checked and we didn't eat it....

The quickest and easiest way to ID cilantro from other similar leaf shaped plants in a mixed bed is to check the base of the plant. Cilantro has a very specific and unique surficial root structure at all stages of growth:

 

[deluxestogie]

On a typical day, I can see from my porch 3 to 5 vultures circling together above the pasture, for hours on end. They sometimes come down to the ground, if there is a recent road kill nearby. Rarely, there are more than 8 or 10. Yesterday afternoon, as one powerful thunderstorm after another narrowly missed me to the North or to the South, I counted 24 vultures taking advantage of a single, strong updraft, to circle together, higher and higher.

Although vultures are beastly ugly up close—on the ground or perched in low branches—when they soar on the updrafts, they are lovely. They seem to stay aloft indefinitely, with no apparent effort. Aviation artistry. Their unsavory reputation derives from their practice of cleaning up the mess of dead creatures that you and I (or other predators) have killed and left to decay and stink.

At the moment, with clear skies and relatively straight-line breezes, I see only a single vulture circling slowly, far in the distance.

Bob