I got my crappy old propagator out last Sunday, 13th January 2013 and sowed the tobacco seeds. They have germinated. Here are a couple of pics:
There’s the propagator. The plastic thing inside which comprises the cells is bat at, but it still works.
It is difficult to see the seedlings, but all cells have some.
There. That’s better. The seedlings are the dots. In a week or so, I’ll start taking out seedlings which are crowded together, leaving those which are as widely spaced as possible. It is a simple matter of extracting them gently with fingers. I’ll leave them in the propagator until they are something like this:
It will probably take at least a month for them to reach that size.
The seeds are described, by the way, as ‘Golden Virginia’. The exact variant is not specified, but the fact that they are Virginia is enough. I went off Monte Calme Yellow when I found out that their leaves are used often as cigar wrappers because they are thinner. I want the fattest leaves that I can get!
In a few days time, once most of the seeds have germinated and grown to 1 cm or so, I’ll take the propagator off the warm shelf in the kitchen and put it on the window ledge in the spare bedroom, which faces South. The temperature in the room is about 20C and the ledge is above a radiator, so they should be happy enough. What I want most of all is to avoid any disasters this year!
Come on, Rose and Frank…… Keep up!
18/01/2013 at 21:34
Nothing yet I checked this evening, except to my surprise one small tray of chili seeds has just started growing roots, usually they take longer.
19/01/2013 at 03:20
The interesting thing is how easily the seeds can be persuaded to germinate. It seems to me that, once they have germinated, it is simply a matter of being patient. Do not try to force them.
19/01/2013 at 11:00
Nothing this morning, but even though the propagator is in a freezing cold room, as the second variety of chili is now growing roots the temperature must be OK.
By rights I should prick them out today, but I really, really don’t want to go out to the greenhouse to get more compost and trays, it’s so cold!
20/01/2013 at 14:46
just put my seeds in the propogater, thanks so much for the info here. last year i was too late andi got a zero crop and did well the previous year but my drying technique made them mouldy – i shall definately try the rolling towel this year.
am going to try e cigarettes soon. – what do you think about making the nicotine liquid with some of this years crop? how might i go about that. – any ideas?
20/01/2013 at 21:45
Good luck with the seeds.
I know nothing about making e-liquid. You might try taking a look at this site:
http://www.leisureliquids.com/
If you look along the ‘contents’ line at the top, the last one is ‘Mixing accessories’. The accessories seem to include some of the necessary materials, but I don’t actually know. I don’t know where you might get instructions for extracting nicotine from leaves.
23/01/2013 at 10:43
well just put mine in 2″ pots ina progator thingy,these are the seeds from last years plants-which did well-i had some 1.5-1.8m specimens!-so i’ll let you know how they get on,last years plants were grown from golden virginia seed off ebay
24/01/2013 at 00:01
It is possible that we bought the same ‘golden Virginia’ seeds! I made an appalling error last year for which I blamed the seeds at the time. The fact was that I was keeping the pots too warm, which affected the seedlings. It was nothing to do with the seeds themselves.
I have used those same seeds and they are doing very well. I think that we have to consider two separate events:
1, Temperatures need to be rather warm to germinate the seeds.
2. Once germinated, temperatures need to be somewhat cooler. You may have seem the study which found that tobacco plants die in soil temperatures not a lot higher than 40C. 40C is only ‘warm’.
I never thought of using the propagator to house 2″ pots. Mine could do that quite easily. I could maybe house 10 or so and spread the germination over, say, three weeks by taking the pots out of the propagator once the seeds have germinated. In that way, we could avoid having to transplant the seedlings from the propagator to pots.
But it will have to wait until next year!