FantomBadger
Member
Greetings everyone,
As per my introduction, I am currently living in Zambia. https://fairtradetobacco.com/threads/greetings-from-zambia-fantombadger.13048/#post-224877 You might be aware that our neighbours, Zimbabwe and Malawi are very well known as tobacco producing regions, both regions heavily dependant on tobacco sales via the auctions to procure foreign exchange into the country.
Tobacco is not quite as big in Zambia, but there seems to be more interest currently. As such I feel that our climate should be very good for growing.
I've started of on 5 April with my initial plantings. At first I was in awe at how small the seeds are. I've never seen anything as small. I always thought mustard seeds are small. I poured the seeds out onto plain white paper towel and used a wetted skewer to pick the seeds up. I planted into Jiffy plugs, something I've wanted to try for a while now, I grow a lot of other vegetables as well and just recently moved to a 5 acre property.
I have a heating pad, but it hasn't really been necessary to use it, what we would do is if it lowers to like 22C at night we'll heat it up to 30C and go back to sleep. Light has initially came from the chargeable camping lanterns, laid flat on top of clear containers. We do not have electricity during the day, and try to preserve the solar as much as possible.
I have planted 30 Burley plugs, should be about 3 seeds per plug, and will do the two types of Virginia I have other the weekend and I also have some Mapacho. The idea is to use it as a thin strip inside the filler bunch. If that doesn't work I'll mix it for chewing tobacco that I will make from the offcuts after cigar production has started.
Here are my plants after day 9, it doesn't look like much, but I'm sure all will come up, if by the weekend there are still completely empty plugs, I'll replant in them.
It is not so easy to see from the photos, but there is some action going on in most of them, some more prolific than others.
These will be replanted into bigger containers, once they have developed the second set of true leaves. At the stage the first true leaves form, I will start applying a very diluted kelp product as a root drench and after the second/third set of as a foliar application.
As per my introduction, I am currently living in Zambia. https://fairtradetobacco.com/threads/greetings-from-zambia-fantombadger.13048/#post-224877 You might be aware that our neighbours, Zimbabwe and Malawi are very well known as tobacco producing regions, both regions heavily dependant on tobacco sales via the auctions to procure foreign exchange into the country.
Tobacco is not quite as big in Zambia, but there seems to be more interest currently. As such I feel that our climate should be very good for growing.
I've started of on 5 April with my initial plantings. At first I was in awe at how small the seeds are. I've never seen anything as small. I always thought mustard seeds are small. I poured the seeds out onto plain white paper towel and used a wetted skewer to pick the seeds up. I planted into Jiffy plugs, something I've wanted to try for a while now, I grow a lot of other vegetables as well and just recently moved to a 5 acre property.
I have a heating pad, but it hasn't really been necessary to use it, what we would do is if it lowers to like 22C at night we'll heat it up to 30C and go back to sleep. Light has initially came from the chargeable camping lanterns, laid flat on top of clear containers. We do not have electricity during the day, and try to preserve the solar as much as possible.
I have planted 30 Burley plugs, should be about 3 seeds per plug, and will do the two types of Virginia I have other the weekend and I also have some Mapacho. The idea is to use it as a thin strip inside the filler bunch. If that doesn't work I'll mix it for chewing tobacco that I will make from the offcuts after cigar production has started.
Here are my plants after day 9, it doesn't look like much, but I'm sure all will come up, if by the weekend there are still completely empty plugs, I'll replant in them.
It is not so easy to see from the photos, but there is some action going on in most of them, some more prolific than others.
These will be replanted into bigger containers, once they have developed the second set of true leaves. At the stage the first true leaves form, I will start applying a very diluted kelp product as a root drench and after the second/third set of as a foliar application.
