How to Harvest and Cure Organic Tobacco

Grown without any man-made insecticides, fertilizers, herbicides or fungicides, organic tobacco is a growing niche market for farmers with smaller acreage. Organic tobacco yields nearly twice the price per pound than conventional tobacco. Follow these steps to harvest and cure your organic tobacco.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Choose either a priming or stalk-cutting harvesting method. Typically your method depends on your tobacco type and plans for curing.

2. Pick each leaf as it reaches its prime. It usually takes 5 or 6 pickings with 5 to 10 days in between each picking to finish harvesting. After picking leaves, place loosely in bins or hang them on long sticks before curing.

3. Cut the tobacco plant's stalk at its base as an alternate harvesting method. Use the stalk-cutting method for burley and fire-cured types of tobacco. You may split open the stalk to speed drying. This makes it easier to place the plants on wooden laths for curing.

4. Pick between curing methods: air, flue or fire. Your curing method depends on your tobacco type and in some cases your harvesting. You must have a large, airtight barn in which you can control the temperature and humidity to cure tobacco.

5. Cure your tobacco leaves. Simple air curing takes about 4 to 8 weeks. To flue cure, you must use high temperatures early in the curing process, resulting in lightly colored leaves. When fire curing, you must dry your leaves naturally for 3 to 5 days. Use hardwood fires to dry at higher temperatures and give the tobacco a certain odor and taste.

Tips & Warnings

• Curing tobacco leaves results in your final tobacco product by drying, decomposing chlorophyll and changing other natural chemicals in the leaves. The quality of your results depends upon proper curing.
• Harvesting by the priming method typically produces higher product yields than stalk-cutting.
• Use the priming harvesting method for flue-cured, cigar and other tobacco leaf types.
• Use fire curing to produce chewing plug and snuff tobaccos.

[hometbacgrower]

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