Grow Tobacco Plant: Location & Procedure

Many people don't even know that you can easily plant tobacco in your garden at home. We reveal everything you need to know about growing tobacco.

Growing tobacco (Nicotiana) in your own garden is on the wish list of every sworn smoker with a green thumb. But even for the abstinent hobby gardener, ornamental tobacco is a real pleasure for the eye and also a small challenge. Because for tobacco to grow and thrive, it requires a certain amount of expertise and a little time. If you want to grow tobacco in your own garden, you have the choice between ornamental tobacco and smoking tobacco. If you want to decorate your garden with tobacco blossoms in summer, some of which shine in a variety of colors all day long, you can use ornamental tobacco varieties (Nicotiana x sanderae). For a later harvest, on the other hand, you can mostly grow Virginian tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) or farmer's tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), because these have a higher nicotine content up the leaves. The site conditions should be tobacco-friendly, especially when growing smoking tobacco and young plants.

Growing Tobacco Plant: Location and Requirements

When cultivating tobacco, please note the following soil and location requirements and you will be sure of a rich and high-quality flowering or harvest:

• Location: Sunny to partially shaded, warm (<10 - 13 °C ist negativ für Ertrag und Qualität), wind- und wettergeschützt
• Not too intense sunlight, no blazing midday sun
• Watering: a lot, groundwater level at least 1 m below ground
• Soil: loose, humus-rich garden soil with a proportion of sand, no waterlogging (not a high proportion of clay)
Soil pH: 5.6 - 6.8
• Susceptible to Chlorine
• Requires a high proportion of lime and potash

Tobacco plants don't tolerate cold. Therefore, plant the plants in a place that is protected from wind and weather on all sides. This is particularly important with smoking tobacco, as wind and hail can quickly tear the leaves. This is unfavorable for further processing. If your growing area in the garden is not protected from the wind on all sides, you should better have oneset up additional windbreaks. Place densely growing plants, fleece or boards on the open side of the bed.

Otherwise, a greenhouse, the house or a raised bed are also suitable for growing tobacco. Observing the right crop rotation is also an advantage, especially when growing smoking tobacco, because chlorine from the soil is deposited in the leaves. With grain as a pre-culture, you can reduce the chlorine content in the soil. However, do not choose sugar beets (Beta vulgaris) or legumes (legumes) for the pre-culture, as these lead to soil compaction or an excessively high nitrogen content. However, the tobacco plant requires loose soil. You should therefore also avoid too high a clay content in the soil. On the other hand, tobacco can in turn serve as a pre-plant for other crops. The tobacco culture optimally prepares the soil. Because a large part of the plant remains in the field after harvest, a nutrient-rich mulch layer is also formed.

Tobacco Cultivation Guide

In the following, you will learn how to successfully grow and transplant tobacco or sow it directly into the bed. We also show what is important when growing ornamental tobacco in pots.

Prefer tobacco

Tobacco plants are usually grown in a warm house and only put outside quite late in the year, after all the little plants are very sensitive to cold temperatures. These can lead to overgrowth or premature flowering. When pre-growing tobacco indoors, do the following:

• Sowing time: from March
• Fill the seed tray (preferably heated) with potting soil such as our Plantura organic herb and seed soil
• Flush potting soil
• Drain Excess Water
• Sow the seeds about 2 cm apart on the soil, only press lightly as the plants germinate in the sun
• Cover the culture vessel with a foil cover
• Always keep the substrate moist, but not wet (use a water sprayer)
• Location: bright but no direct sun; warm at 20 - 30 °C (heating, heating mat)
• Germination time: about 4 - 10 days
• Pricking out from the formation of the second pair of leaves
• Planting from 8 cm in size (after 6 - 8 weeks) after the ice saints
• Before planting out, immerse the root ball in water or water it vigorously

You can either use several small containers or one large, flat container as a cultivation containeruse with cover. A greenhouse is ideal for growing, after all it is important to create a pleasant, humid atmosphere for the small tobacco plants.

Prick out tobacco plants

When transplanting, the seedlings are separated into pots. It is best to use a mixture of peat and sand as the substrate. Also keep a planting distance of at least three centimeters. For permanent culture in pots, the plants are planted individually in suitable pots. When planting in beds, you should plant out the self-grown tobacco plants from mid-May to the end of July. The soil should already be nicely warmed up, there should be no danger of frost and the sun should shine. When planting tobacco in the bed, proceed according to the following points:

• Dig up the bed deeply
• Mix in enough sand into the garden soil to create a loose, slightly granular structure
• Mix in mature compost
• Water the bed about 1 hour before planting
• Draw rows of plants 50 cm apart
• Planting hole: 5 - 8 cm diameter
• Remove weak plants, plant only the strongest
• Plant in double rows 30 - 50 cm apart
• Place plants with roots and 2 cm of the shoot in the planting hole
• Touch the earth
• Start fertilization with special tobacco fertilizer or fertilizer containing potash and lime
• Set up a windbreak if necessary
• Water a lot, especially during the growing season

In addition, keep the young plants that have not yet been planted as a reserve and simply continue cultivating them indoors. This allows you to compensate for outages if necessary. The planting distance depends on the leaf size of the variety: small-leaved varieties are planted more densely than those with large leaves. Ultimately, the plants should be far enough apart that they don't shade each other. Planting deeper also increases the stability of the shoot and should prevent it from twisting. If the plants start to shoot up quickly, you should also pile up soil at the base of the stems. This also stabilizes the stem and encourages lateral root growth.

Note: You can slowly acclimate your young plants before planting them out to make moving from the warm house to the garden more bearable. For this, the mini-tobacco on the days beforeWater the plant less and place it in a pot in a sheltered spot in the garden during the day.

Sowing tobacco in the bed

Alternatively, you can sow your tobacco directly into the bed. Depending on the weather, this happens between the end of March and mid-April at the earliest. However, the plants must not get any more frost. Even temperatures above zero cause problems for the plants if the temperature fluctuations are too great. In cold regions, you should therefore only grow them outside under glass. In warmer regions it is also sufficient to cover the bed with a thin layer of grass, straw or brushwood after sowing.

When cultivating smoking tobacco, the focus is on the most lush foliage possible. You can support this by reducing the flowering of the plants. In this way, the valuable growth potential is not put into flowering and seed formation, but rather into the foliage and its quality. The following steps must be carried out during the cultivation of tobacco in order to be able to bring in a high harvest:

• Heads: Inflorescences are cut off after bud formation 5 - 10 cm below the first flower head
• Maximum: Side sprouts are removed as soon as they form
• Leave some buds for seed production/propagation

Apart from getting a bigger and better quality harvest, topping your tobacco also prevents blue mold. This is favored by wilting flowers.

Growing ornamental tobacco in pots

Ornamental tobacco varieties impress with flowers in beautiful colors and are ideal for closing gaps in beds or as background planting thanks to their upright, slender growth. Depending on the variety, the strong to non-fragrant flowers only open in the evening hours or are open all day. We have put together a brief overview of the variety of ornamental and smoking tobacco for you here. When cultivating ornamental tobacco, the same applies as when cultivating smoking tobacco - with the difference that damage caused by wind and weather reduces the ornamental value, but not the quality of the harvest. When planting, simply proceed as in the overview in the following section - only the row planting in the bed refers exclusively to smoking tobacco. You can cultivate ornamental tobacco individually or in groups in the bed, depending on your preference.

Due to its small growth height, ornamental tobacco is also ideal for pot culture. Follow these steps to grow tobacco in a pot:

• Pot: diameter of about 30 cm
• Drainage layer of clay; Lay out gravel on the ground
• Fill up the pot with humus-rich potting soil such as our Plantura organic potting soil
• Put the plant in the pot
• Water well

It is best to place your ornamental tobacco in a pot in a sheltered and sunny place.

Note: With perennial ornamental tobacco varieties, remember that they must be overwintered frost-free.

One pest that often troubles tobacco plants is the tobacco beetle. In this article you will learn how to recognize and combat it.