Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Planting and growing tobacco in your garden


See full Article When the frosts have finished it’s time to finally plant out those tobacco plants into the garden. If they are like mine they will be looking pretty crowded, tangled and a bit straggly so they will need separating and given some space.

There were four tobacco plants put outside a few weeks ago but “unusually” the snails have made a meal out of them. So it’s time to put down some sort of slug repellent. I have to admit to using a small amount of salt round each plant here, but you can use a commercial snail or slug repellent.

If you keep chickens or birds or just don’t want to add another problem to the local wildlife you can get non toxic versions to keep the slugs at bay and that should keep "everybody happy".

Digging over the soil before planting will make it easy for the new plants tender root system to take well and there is little need to add anything to the soil unless it’s really acidic. The tobacco plants should grow well in just garden soil and apart from the aforementioned snails this soil and a bit of water should be enough to make the tobacco plants grow strong.

Unless you have a lot of space or want to grow a lot of tobacco you will find that you will have spares left over. You can discard them if you like but it might be worth keeping a few and planting them in small pots in case the slugs, snails or just bad weather destroy your current crop.

see all pages about growing tobacco from seed