Timor-Leste Grow Log

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Yes professor that's a valid point. I wasn't able to find any of those trays in shops in the area. I know they must be there because I've seen farmers use them. The pots I use are quite small and I water them by placing them on a tray with water. Water is extracted by the soil through the bottom. To add a bit to that I have a small spray bottle which works quite good. Glad to hear that tobacco-whisperer deluxestogie was able to point out their satisfaction level. I'm still a bit puzzled why the second sowing of Ainaro picked up much faster than the first of all three. They differ about two weeks in age but there's no way you'd see that from looking at them.

Curing barns in this region are all build from bamboo. It's relatively cheap and it's very strong. It's great material to do all sorts of things with. Myself I have no curing barn but I intend to bring my harvested leafs to a farmer who has a nice curing barn about half an hour driving from here by motorbike. But that's still quite a number of weeks away. First we'll have to see what these plants look like.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

The little Timor tobacco has grown a bit the past few weeks, thus here we are with an update.


Both the Ainaro and Liquiçá are spread over two little pots. One Liquiçá pot was in the sun for a bit and most of the seedlings died. The two remaining ones must be relatively strong, which is why I keep them going. The two Ainaro pots are fairly similar in content. Only one Viqueque, because as you may remember, I had only a little amount of seed. They're going strong though.


For comparison I am growing this Besuki plant and keeping it in the same stage as the Timor-Leste. There is going to be a whole lot of Besuki that follows. Those that were planted later are from the same batch as from which I am sending some of you a bag of seeds. You'll see them on the third picture above. The picture in-between is that of the remaining Timor-Leste plants that have not yet been transplanted. I am not sure what I should do. I will not be home for the next week.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

The seedlings have now been transplanted to individual pots.


First, some pictures of the growth during the last few days. We were away for a couple of days and it was nice to come back and see that the plants had survived on the water given prior to departure. All seemed in good order. Thanks to Indonesia's humid climate I suppose. I am especially content with having 5 Viqueque plants, as we collected only a small amount of seeds. The other two are spread over two pots each. Some Liquiçá died early on. Even though the first batch of Ainaro seeds failed to germinate, the second batch came on strong.


Here they are, all together in one picture. In the first picture in the back row are all orange pots, containing Viqueque. The two rows with exclusively blue pots are Ainaro. The remaining two rows with mixed coloured pots are Liquiçá. The second picture I took after dawn with a flash. The two rows of pictures are three days apart. Still hard to see any difference among the three. Hard to say at this point if I ever will...

 

[Gavroche]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Nice

Lamp of growth ?

 

[deluxestogie]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Most seedlings will "rest" for a few days or a week after transplanting, then you should see some impressive growth.

Bob

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

So the tale continues, but it's not all that positive. Moving to our new house had been on my mind for a while in terms of getting all our tobacco and fruit plants to the place, safe and sound. My biggest fear was that the (larger) Amersfoort and Kasturi plants wouldn't make it. However, as things turned out, getting the Timor-Leste seedlings to adapt to their new environment was more of a concern.


Let's begin the series of photos on the 20th of September. On this picture they are one week older compared to the last picture posted in post #23. The names on their tags had started to fade so I had made the effort of replacing them. At this point I had gotten rid of 1 Ainaro and 2 Liquiçá that didn't seem to make it. No worries so far. I prepared the pots to be taken to their new home. I had scooped a couple of shopping baskets the week prior to moving as to transport them more conveniently. This worked quite well and once we got to our new place I thought of putting the plants in the bathroom for starters. Frankly, I was too busy moving the furniture to be doing anything else with it.


Another reason for putting them in the bathroom was that I had not had the opportunity to really scan our garden for a sun-free spot for them to be in. All in all I thought the bathroom couldn't do much harm. But it did. I suppose it was the lack of fresh air. After two days I began to notice that some of the leafs were starting to yellow and fall off. I wasn't quite sure whether it was because of moving them in the first place or because of the bathroom conditions. I decided to take four pots and put them behind the house, where both the house and the much larger durian containers would keep them shaded during most of the day. Two more days and I realized that those left in the bathroom started to get worse. I moved all of them to the garden, but for many it was too late. I was able to salvage 6 Ainaro and 1 Liquiçá. Interestingly, the Liquiçá is by far the largest seedling and it seems to be doing quite well. The last two pictures were taken this morning, the 2nd of October.

I am sad to have lost so many seedlings, especially sad for having no Viqueque plant any longer. As you may recall, Viqueque was by far the least abundant in seed, taken from Timor-Leste. Thus, this first Timor-Leste grow-out will not see all three (possible) varieties grow to large plants and we will have to remain patient. Hopefully the 1 Liquiçá plant will live, with some Ainaro by their side. Looking at things from a positive perspective, the whole Timor-Leste quest will be extended to another grow. Luckily I live in Indonesia where it will be easy to grow tobacco continuously throughout the year. Then again, the weather has been unpredictable. The dry season has lasted for about three weeks. We'll how things will end up...

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Two more down, five still going. Luckily it were two Ainaro that didn't make it, Liquiçá is still going. She's the tallest of 'em all.

 

[Gavroche]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

The sowing, we believe that it died and then that restarts it is very resistant...

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

In December I will go to Sumba and search for tobacco there. Not sure what I'll find, but hopefully I'll end up with something like in Timor-Leste.
For now, I'll have to keep myself busy with the few Timor-Leste plants I still got going. The soil in some of the pots started turning a bit moldy. Therefore I transplanted all of them to a slightly larger pot. Except for the smallest Ainaro, which i kept in the same size pot, just refreshing the soil. Interestingly, the Ainaro were suffering from whiteflies, but the Liquiçá was not at all. I brushed the whiteflies of and hope they won't return in large numbers. I hope these little fellows will reach a growth spurt soon.

 

[Hasse SWE]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Interesting "Tutu", I think you will found almost the same variants in Sumba. When You was asking me if I would like to swap some seed I read about Besuki tobacco and the file I found was from Sumba (little surprised that you ain't spell it in Dutch). By the way in the PDF-file they talk about: Olson#68 (a big leaf N.Rustica) and Besuki so I hope you will see some N.Rustica and Besuki But also some other tobacco types.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Haha I spell Dutch things in Dutch, and Indonesian things in Indonesian. But would you have that pdf file for me please? Would be interestig to read. I found a video on YouTube where people in Sumba were cutting up tobacco in the same way as they do for Kasturi. Also curious if there are any commercial fields in Sumba, which I did not find on Timor.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

This website has an interestig story about local tobacco from Sumba.

On Sumba, in area called tambo laka, came across some local tobacco in the market,to launch tambo,American Robert tomko invested about $500.000 of his saving, and formed PT. world wide horizons in late 2007, which own PT. Tambolaka Natural Tobaccos, the operating company for tambo. The cigar for retail around $10 a stick, easily half the price of many Cuban sigars.

Tambo differs from all other Indonesian cigar makers by using his sumba tobacco, grown organically by villagers in small batches. The tobacco is cured in long tubes of handwoven rope in the villager’s huts for about five years before it is rolled into tambos, then aged from another six months by tomko before it is sold, the aging process mellows the falvor of the tobacco-a technique used by many of the world’s best cigar-makers, it needs to age, just like a fine wine.

The tambos are made using approximately 20% sumba tobacco, the rest besuki tobacco. Doesn’t use 100% sumba tobacco because the aged tobacco is too strong, a rustica tobacco, which has the highest nicotine content of he various tobacco strains. However, he does sell 100% sumba as pipe tobacco. And will realese the tambota which contains 35 to 40% sumba tobacco.

That means I'll find my way to some local farmers in the Tambolaka area. It does indeed mention farmers growing rustica. It doesn't say the Besuki used in those cigars comes from Sumba as well. But if it does, it will be easy to recognise for me. Looking forward to this trip....

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

I still got four of these little guys going. Many leafs had what I believe are whitefly eggs sticked to them. I removed them with cotton swabs, which wasn't an easy thing to do. Then made a mix of normal soil, coco-peat and rice husk, topping the previous top layer. The plants are doing fine, and I am keeping a close eye on their growth. Just germinated some Viqueque seed (as well as the other two) as I don't have any plant that made it into healthy seedling-hood. Here are a few pictures.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

This is how Timor-Leste is doing. The smallest plant (first picture, bottom-left) at one point looked like it was not gonna make it, but it did survive after all. The two other pots in the second image (bottom-right) are Besuki. Still a few whiteflies around but their numbers are small and their days will soon be counted. Looking forward to see their grow in the coming twenty days. After that I will be gone for about two weeks.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

My intention here is to draw the first conclusion on the differences among two of the Timor-Leste varieties. Although the plants are quite small, I can tell that at this stage all three Ainaro plants have spade-shaped leafs, whereas the Liquiçá's leaf shape is more stretched. The two largest plants have gone into large containers. I've paid more attention to making a soil mix than I did for my Amersfoort plants. I'll go really easy on the water too, as it rains heavily. For now I've found a spot where they are sheltered for about 80% of the rainfall (depending on the wind). The containers are the same size as the Amersfoort containers.

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Yet a new bunch of little fellows ready to go into their final growing containers. Two out of three are Timor-Leste plants, they are Ainaro. The other is Besuki, sourced from a field in an area in the south of Jember. I took some photos while transplanting them but apparently only few of these photos made it unto the SD card. So I've made a few new photo's this morning. First you'll see the three plants I transplanted. After that is the line up of all of them. There's also the unidentified plant which Isabel found in-between a few papaya's. Read about it in Papaya's Little Friend. In East Timor terms, there are three Ainaro's and one Liquiçá. The current line up looks like this:

Ainaro - Besuki - Unknown - Ainaro - Liquiçá - Ainaro

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

Tutu,
I have seen no mention of the Lumajan tobacco seed. I'm wondering what you know of it. Also, the Timor-Leste varieties you acquired; what is your suspicion of tobacco classification? Cigar, light air, dark air, primitive? What do people smoke in those regions? Were they growing this tobacco for personal use or as a crop?

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

ChinaVoodoo,

Not much mention of it, you're right. I talked about it once in the 9th post of the Java Sun Cured thread. In that same thread, look at post #20 on the second map I posted. There you'll find Lumajang as a city. Lumajang is a Regency, just like Jember is. But whereas in Jember farmers grow both Besuki and Sun Cured varieties, in Lumajang they grow only the latter. THey have their own variety there, which is the Lumajang, but I also suspect that they grow Kasturi's. I've seen one White Stem Burley farmer when I visited Lumajang about two months ago. Lumajang is sometimes also called a Kasturi so I expect it to be somewhat similar. On the other hand, Kasturi is always primed whereas they stalk harvest Lumajang. At least, I've seen them do that on some old photographs. I've never seen anyone do that with Kasturi. I think they Air Cure the Lumajang in the same way as these farmers Air Cure the White Stem Burley. Also, I think Lumajang production is declining in recent years. That is about as much as I know about it and I would have to ask around a bit more to find out more.

For the Timor-Leste varieties it is difficult to determine pre-growing. The plants I obtained seeds from were difficult to draw conclusions from. The lady from whom I got the Viqueque told me that the men roll the tobacco in dried corncob-skin, which is common on some Indonesian islands and in Malaysia. The plant I got seeds from didn't look as if it were harvested. Neither did the Ainaro. That grow on the shady side of a small hut. It had grown very tall to outreach the hut to obtain sun. Then again, these plants might be the offspring of earlier plants that were grown to be harvested. None of these two places seemed to have any place where they could air cure or dark air cure. They were probably either Sun Cured, or Semi-Sun Cured as there was not too much sun and heat in the mountains. In general these type of folks like a strong smoke. Therefore it could have been selected for that over the years, if any selection at all. Then again, it could be a very primitive tobacco. However, the Liquiçá was definitely being harvested. It was a strong tall plant that was being grown for a reason. On the first picture of the third row of photos in post #1 of this thread you can also see how in a Liquiçá village some plants were neatly transplanted and lined up. I had not seen any sings of transplanting in Viqueque and Ainaro. There, most tobacco grew in shaded places, often in-between rocks.

Thus, for the three Timor-Leste varieties I suggest we'll look at what they look like after growing. Unfortunately I was not able to get the Viqueque going. But I have three Ainaro's and one Liquiçá. I will first post a picture of the same line up which I posted on the 16th. I have left all the plants there during the days I was on Sumba. I've taken out some sand-lugs and put them in a sunnier place today, which is the second photo. The new line-up here is Ainaro - Liquiçá - Ainaro - Ainaro. They'll suffer a bit at first because they haven't had much sun to deal with yet. Leafs are still very thin. They are followed up by three individual plant pictures which are the Ainaro. The very last picture is Liquiçá.

 

[deluxestogie]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

The vein angle of the Liquiçá is nearly rectangular, whereas the vein angle of the Ainaro is more acute. This might suggest that the Liquiçá is selected as a wrapper. I'm just guessing.

Bob

 

[Tutu]

Re: Timor-Leste 2016 Grow Adventure

I have to add that when removing mud lugs today I found many suckers on all four Timor-Leste varieties, especially the Ainaro. At a very low stem position they start shooting up like they're desperate for it. To me this seems quite primitive, but I am not sure if that is typically the case with primitive tobaccos. I do note the vein angle of the Liquiçá being more perpendicular than that of the Ainaro. Interesting to see how this develops...