Grow Your Own Tobacco – Here's How It Works
Growing tobacco is not one of the easiest endeavors, but tobacco from private cultivation tastes particularly good. First of all, it should be mentioned: private tobacco cultivation is legal in Germany. However, resale is prohibited. Tobacco seeds can be found in garden stores or online shops starting at two euros (for 500 seeds). Different plants have different requirements. We give you an overview.
Where does the tobacco plant thrive?
As is well known, tobacco is mainly grown in the Midwest of the USA, Brazil, and Cuba, but also in China and India. Tobacco plants thrive in temperate and subtropical climates – something you should consider when growing them indoors or in a greenhouse:
- Tobacco plants need plenty of sunlight, about six to eight hours a day.
- They prefer a room temperature between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius.
- You can place the tobacco plant for sowing on the windowsill in your home.
- It also needs plenty of water, while avoiding waterlogging – good drainage is important.
- An ideal pH value is between 6.0 and 6.8.
- Pay attention to a low humidity, as high humidity can cause diseases in the tobacco plant.
Sowing tobacco in your home garden
If you want to plant tobacco in the garden, you should wait until about mid-March to avoid soil frost, which is harmful to the tobacco plant. Alternatively, you can pre-grow your private tobacco cultivation on the windowsill in the apartment and then transplant it. Use a small tray with seedling soil or potting soil, as tobacco plants prefer loose, ideally also sandy soil.
You should keep the tray with the tobacco seeds of your choice moist for one to two weeks using a water spray. Also, make sure that the sun shines directly on the plant. Once the seedlings have reached a certain size of about one centimeter, you can transplant the tobacco plant into a pot or prick it out. This is necessary because the tobacco plant needs more space for root growth in a pot.
The pot should hold about three to five liters of volume. Here, the plant can grow for the next two months.
Transplanting in the garden or pot
From mid-May, you can start transplanting. At this point, the seedlings should:
- be about eight to ten centimeters tall, and
- have four to six leaves.
If you opt for transplanting into a pot, we recommend a pot size of about 40 centimeters. Tobacco plants prefer a mixture of compost soil and sand, and you should water the plant regularly.
If you want to plant tobacco plants in the garden, you should check whether the garden soil is warm down to the deeper layers. Cold harms the plant. You can plant the seedlings at intervals of thirty to forty centimeters, as they grow sprawling and can reach a height of up to two meters. This prevents the tobacco plants from shading each other. Always loosen the soil thoroughly, ensure direct sunlight, and ideally place the plants in a windless location.
The tobacco leaves gradually ripen from bottom to top and require six to eight weeks. In the first weeks, the young plants may show wilting signs during the day, especially on warm days. This is completely natural; they usually recover by evening. During this phase, you should also cut off flower stalks and some of the leaves below them to encourage stronger leaf development.
The point where you top the plant depends on how you intend to use the tobacco. If you are growing tobacco for cigarettes or cigars, you should top deeply – where the buds have just become visible. To do this, remove the flower stalks about ten to fifteen centimeters below the lowest flower branch.
The leaves gradually ripen over six to eight weeks from bottom to top. The tobacco harvest begins in July, if the seeds were sown in early April, about sixty days after planting out.
Growing tobacco in Cuba
Cuban cigars use only Tabaco Negro Cubano for production. When exactly the tobacco is planted depends on weather conditions and soil quality. Cubans follow various guidelines for this.
The planting season for tobacco plants for cigars is between mid-October and early January. The planting time influences the flavor and aroma of the cigars. It is divided into:
- early planting (mid-October to mid-November),
- optimal planting (mid-November to mid-December),
- semi-late planting (mid to late December), and
- late planting (early to late January).
In January, for example, the Criollo 92 and Criollo 98 varieties are only planted. Before that, the seeds are grown in nurseries from September to November.
The tobacco is cultivated in two different ways:
- Tabaco del Tapado: Plants are protected from sunlight under gauze covers. This method is mainly used for wrapper leaves.
- Tabaco del Sol: The plants grow under direct sunlight. The leaves are used for filler and binder of a cigar. Harvesting takes place from December to March.
