Harvesting fluecured leaf (common collective maturity)

[chillardbee]

Alright guys, this winter I'm going to build my fluecure chamber. After reading about fluecuring, there's a certian maturity that it should be picked at, this we all know. What I'm wodering is, when the time comes, how many leaf can be primed per plant at once? I've often seen in videos that they pick 2-3 at once. I kind of like the 3/plant personally. If the middle of the 3 primed leaf is at more or less perfect maturity then the leaf below it would be slighty over mature and the one above slighty under although they may still for all intent be at the right stage of maturity.

If it's done like this, it buys time so that by the time the first batch is done curing, the next batch will be just about ready for priming.

Of course this will likely work better if only one type of baccy is grown or if varieties with similar growth habits are grown together. Planning on a three leaf priming regime helps me plan how many plants I can grow to fill a stick and to fill the chamber.

Thoughts?

 

[AmaxB]

Great question speaking based on the experience I had last year. I grew 14 varieties most were flue cure this forced me to mix leaf and my results curing could have been better and curing could have been easier if they were not mixed.
In an effort to mix as little as possible some primings I did a third, half, and even whole plants this did make curing more difficult. To do it again I would know what my chamber could hold with out packing the leaf to tight. Than figure on 3 to 5 leaves per plant to fill the chamber and grow that many plants. I would grow no more than 3 varieties of flue cure paying attention to the time line each would reach maturity. Keep in mind time (days) to cure a load. This would keep it simpler as far as the curing goes. Top leaves are smaller, mid stalk large and heavy, and lugs large but thin. By mixing your fighting the moisture contained with in the leaves and leaf quality, when curing making the process difficult. Mixing varieties that are close in size etc. I found for me they cured differently.

 

[DGBAMA]

I did 5-6 per priming this year. From a little over ripe to a little under, most in the middle being right on. Took about 2 weeks for the next series of leaf to be ready on those plants. This gave me a week in the middle to run a batch of different variety/growth pattern.

 

[deluxestogie]

I'll cast a vote for 3 leaves, give or take. Although working with a single flue-cure variety (VA Bright Leaf), there were two windows of time that allowed a couple of flue-cure batches of Prilep. And the Cozy Can was never near capacity.

I think AmaxB has zeroed in on the best approach for a given size chamber. Work backward from there to determine how many plants to put in the ground. The fewer the varieties, the fewer the headaches. My cutesy Cozy Can is probably capable of managing 16 to 20 plants, max. But I use flue-cured only for pipe blending, so that is plenty of capacity for my needs. Build big, if you need a large crop.

Bob