#asknostr
I might have asked this before, but is anyone here actually grown tobacco? I'm not really a nicotine user, but occasionally I like to use fronto leaf to roll a blunt or something like that.
Everything I read online though says that tobacco can take years to age. I know good things take time, but will it really take up to five years to get decent leaf to use?
Yes, you'd need to cure it in a barn until it changes color to brown then you would need enough leaf bundles to pile to start fermentation. Without this a lot of compounds are still in the leaf which can make for a gnarly experience. Possible you could experiment to cut down on ferment time.
Air curing is only one method. Flue cutting can shorten the process significantly based on the desired result.
One summer maybe when I was about 10 years old I helped my grandparents who were testing if growing tobacco would be worth it. It was quite the operation with several fields of tobacco planted. It involved getting to the field to harvest leaves at early early dawn before the sun rises while the dew is still on the leaves. I was privy to and involved in the whole process from seed to harvest to spending hours to put each individual leave threaded orderly on giant needles then threaded together onto a hemp rope to then dry hung in a greenhouse. Many of the villagers did that and many grandchildren visiting were also helping and sometimes I'd visit friends at their houses and help out there as well, mainly with the needling part that and other years when my grandparents didn't grow, so we can go play outside sooner as they had to finish the days work.
The drying hmmm probably take more like weeks or months but as far as aging... Not sure. I was always back to school and not too exposed to that part.
Sounds like an interesting experience.
It's a fair amount of work and can be tough to grow in many environments.
If it's whole leaf you're after, wholeaftobacco.com has a pretty good selection.
