Smoking tobacco - growing out of seeds

As the history goes, tobacco was first introduced to Russia by Peter the Great. Since then, this plant has successfully taken root in our land, which was not native to it, and at one time it was cultivated directly on an industrial scale: almost every landlord could boast of tobacco grown in his garden. The secrets of growing smoking tobacco from seeds, we will share in our article.

Smoking tobacco - description

Before you start cultivating smoking tobacco in your area, it is not superfluous to learn a little about this plant. So, tobacco is a plant of the Solanaceae family. In nature, there is a huge number of different types of tobacco, but only two of them are cultured: virgin tobacco and makhorka. Virgin tobacco is very thermophilic, reaches a height of about 3 meters and has many varieties. Mahorka grows much lower (no more than 1.5 meters), has more subtle taste qualities and is less demanding of environmental conditions. When choosing a sort of makhorka for growing on your own site, you should stop on the species adapted for each specific territory.

How to grow tobacco from seeds?

1. To get a good harvest, it is very important to properly catch the time when sowing tobacco seeds. Usually, the planting of tobacco seeds for seedlings begins at the end of winter (late February). You can certainly sow tobacco later, but it is likely that he will not have time to fully ripen before the autumn frosts, which are destructive for him.
2. Since tobacco seeds are very small, in order to plant them, you need to connect them with sand. For germination of tobacco seeds, it is necessary to use sufficiently spacious and shallow containers, filling them with earth not reaching the edge by 10-15 mm. Sow the seeds on the surface of the earth, and immediately after planting, organize a mini-greenhouse: cover with a plastic bag or glass. The soil in the mini-greenhouse should be moist, but not wet, otherwise the seeds will simply rot.
3. In order for the seeds to germinate, they need to create certain conditions: a temperature of 23-28 ° C and good illumination. Watering crops is best done using a spray.
4. After the appearance of two real leaves on the sprouts of tobacco, they can already be divided into individual containers with earth. When transplanting, it is important to handle the seedlings very carefully, since their damage will lead to the death of the plant.
5. Transplanting seedlings in the open ground begin in late May, when the danger of nocturnal frosts finally passes by. When planting between the bunches of tobacco leave gaps of 40-50 cm.
6. The soil for planting tobacco should be chosen light, well saturated with oxygen. Tobacco beds should be placed on a sunny area, where there is no danger of stagnation of water. Since tobacco needs a lot of potassium, the bed should be fertilized with ashes or cow dung .
7. To obtain a better quality harvest, tobacco bushes should be punched - they break about half of the blossoming flower stalks. After that, tobacco is actively started to be issued by stepsons, who are also subject to removal.
8. Harvesting starts from the lowest leaves, which ripen after a month and a half after planting the seedlings in the open ground. Tobacco harvesting also has its own characteristics: it should be collected in the evening, when the leaves contain the least amount of water and most carbohydrates. A sign that the leaves can be collected is their yellowing and stickiness, whitening of the central vein. When you remove the mature leaf, a characteristic click is heard.