Tobacco Planting
Last year @mericanhomestead blessed us with a couple of seed pods from tobacco plants. The seed pods gives the appearanceof a large seed, close to the size of peanut.
When you break open one of the seed pods you see several hundred seeds that are as small as white clover seeds.
Planting these little seeds can be tricky. Simply get some loose, moist soil and shake a few seeds over each pot. Then you simply water them into the dirt.
So why plant tobacco? We are not planting it for our consumption but for our animals. It is a great natural wormer! We simply grow it all summer then cut it and hang it to dry. More to come on this 'tiny' seed....they grow over 5 feet tall!
There's a lot of history in those tiny seeds! Thank you for sharing the growing experience, tobacco would be fun to grow. Tobacco leaves were used as money at one time, so you could be growing a 'money tree'... literally! @ironshield
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/tobacco-money
I had no idea they used it for money. Maybe something we should look at today? Thank you for sharing!
From 1642 to 1727... almost 100 years of tobacco money! If they had a pipe, they literally burned their money. @ironshield
Wow I never new it was a wormer. Great post
nice @shalomacres good point, of course, we are not planting for our consumption but for our animals. helpful post to give info to other folks, have a good day enjoy and thank you for sharing
I was just going to ask why you would plant that! Very interesting!
Wow! Did not know this! Our neighbors rent one of our old tobacco barns (common in KY) to dry his tobacco. Will have to do some research on this!!
We simply mix the dried leaves with the alfalfa pellets and feed. I am no expert but we feed 1 cup per 10 lbs of alfalfa.
@thefarmerswife - we lease our tobacco barn too! We tell our neighbor not to worry about cleaning up when he's done. There are always lots of dried leaves in the barn and we glean them for our animals. Talk to your neighbor about doing the same!
Great idea! He's already got his out. I'm betting he didn't even think of cleanup lol :)
We leased an acre of land the past two years to the neighbor for tobacco. He plants several of his own acres and then leases a little land from a couple neighbors. We also have a tobacco barn on our property that we lease to him as well for him to dry the tobacco. Instead of cleaning the barn out when he's done we tell him not to worry about it and we glean the dried leaves that have fallen to feed to our livestock! It's a great system. :)
I hope your tobacco crop does well. Keep in mind that when you harvest to wear gloves and long sleeves and long pants. The oil on the plant before being dried is potent and can make you really sick! We see a lot of workers get sick every year from harvesting tobacco!
Great info! I like you idea of gleaning, better than planting your own.
I also heard from some homesteading friends that they plant it next to their other plants because it boosts those plants' immune systems. Don't know if it's true, but they said it worked. :)
Interesting. I know they kept the horn worms off the tomatoes...only because the horn worms like the tobacco more!
Ha ha, that's funny. I didn't know they did that.