The Story of Jessica's Fantastic 2014 =)

[JessicaNicot]

cant really do anything about the nursery except wait and see =(

I grew up in florida so otherwise im not too concerned. I currently rent a townhome that's doubly insured via the owner and myself.

 

[JessicaNicot]

also I just looked at our local weather and they have already moved the track further east. it might not even make landfall.

 

[JessicaNicot]

also, if anyone is especially interested, the NCSU Tobacco Tour schedule has been announced (July 14-15): http://plantpath.cals.ncsu.edu/nc-tobacco-tour/

I've never been and no one directly involved with my program is involved that I know of, but we work with Loren Fisher quite a bit and I like him.

 

[JessicaNicot]

Another Tobacco Tour announcement, this time in South Carolina:

The South Carolina Tobacco tour will be held this Thursday, July 10, starting at Clemson University’s Pee Dee Research and Education Center, 2200 Pocket Rd., Florence, South Carolina. Please find attached an updated schedule of the tour. Registration starts at 8:15 a.m. at the tobacco facility at the back of the PDREC.
At PDREC one can view solar curing barns, the Regional Variety Tests, the Official Variety Test, Regional Growth Regulator plots, harvest management and irrigation studies, bacterial wilt management, bacterial wilt nursery, plus insect management plots. After leaving the PDREC, we will have lunch at the Thunderbird in Florence, then visit the Black Shank nursery in Sumter County. The tour will end in the middle of the afternoon on July 10.


I realize it's only 2 days away, but I just found out.

 

[JessicaNicot]

So no impacts here from Arthur. The field looked great on Monday when I saw it last. Im hopefully going out tomorrow to work on taking some more picture such as these:


This is plot number 78, which is McCullers 27 (PI 552701), which come to think of it might not be right since McCullers Crossroads is a place here in NC so I'd expect it to be flue-cured... but it's what I've got. The variety has very distinct convex leaves. I got the inspiration for the detached leaf pics from Bob except my board is marked in centimeters. I'm using cut in half index cards with the plot numbers on them for identification and then I'm going to photoshop them later with textbox labels.


Also, I remember last year telling you guys about the large bees that bite the base of the flowers to suck out the nectar because they are too large to fit in the corolla tubes. I finally caught a couple in the act:

 

[deluxestogie]

Great bee photos. It makes you wonder why more insects haven't thought of that. Human children figured out that they couldn't fit inside the blossom of a honeysuckle, so they evolved the sophisticated method of breaking off the blossom, then pulling the pistil like a plunger, to draw out the nectar.

Your current photo of McCullers 27 (PI 552701) appears to be a Spanish (Havana) type, like Zimmer Spanish and Comstock Spanish. It does not resemble the flue-cured-classed plant shown on in the GRIN photo (http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1447673).

Bob

 

[JessicaNicot]

you're so clever. it definitely doesn't look the same as that older photo from 2005. that's the third misidentified line just this year that im going to have to breakout the backup seedlots for. im really starting quite a collection of "unknowns". =/

wait, I take it back. look at the leaves on the suckers in the GRIN photo. they are definitely downward cupping... the GRIN photo was from when the collection was grown in Oxford and I believe they used to receive more fertilizer in line with standard commercial production rates. the nursery in Clayton doesn't get the full regimen of fertilizer and that may have something to do with the differences we're seeing. to be honest, I don't have any information regarding McCullers 27 so it could really be anything...

 

[deluxestogie]

Maybe you could send some green leaf of the McCullers 27 to a flue-curing operator (to run with his usual batch). If it's a Spanish type, flue-curing will just give you brown, "dead" leaf, whereas if it's really a flue-cure type, the operator could easily tell.

Bob

 

[JessicaNicot]

Maybe you could send some green leaf of the McCullers 27 to a flue-curing operator (to run with his usual batch). If it's a Spanish type, flue-curing will just give you brown, "dead" leaf, whereas if it's really a flue-cure type, the operator could easily tell.

Bob

interesting idea. i'll think about it.

 

[JessicaNicot]

today's good read on what could be the end of the era of cigar manufacturers in tampa:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/u...n-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

[FmGrowit]

today's good read on what could be the end of the era of cigar manufacturers in tampa:

Pretty sad. I was lucky enough to visit Ybor City just at the end of its heyday. The transformation from industrial to commercial had begun, but it was an eclectic balance of clubs, restaurants, bars and mom and pop cigar shops. We stayed at The Don Vicente de Ybor Historic Inn built in the late 1800's...probably the closest thing to being in Cuba while being in the States.

I hear Ybor is one of the most dangerous places in Florida now and consider myself very lucky to have experienced the culture that unfortunately is likely gone forever.

 

[deluxestogie]

That NY Times article includes an interesting 10-image slide show.

Stem stripping machine.

Bob

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/u...r=1#slideshow/100000003009836/100000003009841

 

[FmGrowit]

Dead link

 

[Jitterbugdude]

Works for me

 

[leverhead]

Works for me too.

 

[FmGrowit]

Yep. Note edit times vs. post times

 

[deluxestogie]

My post with the photo of the stemming machine originally had no link, just a caption. The link was in Jessica's post. Sorry for the confusion.

Bob

 

[JessicaNicot]

"Rough day at the office"

 

[deluxestogie]

Ah! Life in the Ivory Tower.

Bob

 

[JessicaNicot]

Here's another one of me in action taking a detached leaf photo (our Chinese visitor love to take pictures).



these turned out to involve a lot more walking than I had planned. it was almost impossible to take them in the field due to the shadows so I had to strategically place my board to service 16 consecutive plots (our field is in blocks of 8 plots to accommodate the sprayer, 64 plots across total), go to the plot to fetch the leaf, return to the board to take the detached leaf photo, go back to the plot to take the whole plant photo, then proceed to the next plot. it was an exhausting couple of days but I have finished almost all of them done (still waiting on a couple of things to reach my desired maturity level).