Waterlily

Growing tobacco

We've experimented with growing tobacco over the last three years, and had good success with growing and drying. However, we haven't yet found a device or cutter that will make it possible to cut very finely for cigarettes, like commercial hand-rolling tobacco. Nonetheless, this is a lovely plant to grow.

The seeds require warmth to germinate, but tobacco grows well in the UK.

Tobacco seeds and seedlings are tiny.

They grow fast.

Grow in pots, inside or outside; or grow outside in the ground.

Beautiful flowers

Beautiful roots

Beautiful leaves

Pressing and cutting

We read of and tried a method used by sailors, who used to wrap rope or twine around rolls of tobacco leaves to allow them to mature under compression. They cut slices from the end to smoke, rubbing the slices to open out the strands. This came to be called 'navy cut' tobacco.

Navy cut.

The two on the left are commercial cigarette rolling tobaccos. The one on the right is ours. It's OK for a pipe or cigar filler, but it needs to be much finer for cigarettes.

Buying seeds

We bought our tobacco seeds over the internet from Plantation House. We bought Maryland 609, Virginia and Monte Calme Yellow seeds; all suitably light for cigarette tobacco. There is a great deal of information on their site, as well as a forum of growers.

The law

The position with growing and using tobacco in the UK seems to be that if it's for personal use, no one's going to trouble you.

This is from a letter sent by Customs & Excise to Plantation House in October 2001:

There is not a great deal of home-grown tobacco smoked in the UK and we will certainly not be targeting potential domestic tobacco producers. Nor do we wish to devote a disproportionate amount of resource to the control of hobby growers and manufacturers.

You may wish to point out to your customers that duty only becomes due once the tobacco can be smoked, i.e. when the cured tobacco leaves have been shredded. There is no duty on tobacco seeds, which are quite legal to buy, or on the tobacco plants themselves.

Additive-free tobacco

A major consideration with growing your own tobacco is that it can be organically grown and additive-free.

In 2006, Gallaher listed on their site 366 additives to their cigarette tobacco. However, later that year they were taken over by Japan Tobacco, who don't list the info on their site (they state that that section of the website is currently under construction - at 22/04/09).

[Update 21st July 2011: The Japan Tobacco site now shows the ingredients added to tobacco. The info for the UK is here.]

If you are not growing your own and you want to smoke tobacco without additives, you can buy Free Jack Non-Additive Tobacco (that's 'non-additive', not 'non-addiCtive'). This one is sold in Spain, but a Dutch company makes it, so it's likely available elsewhere too. Unfortunately, it says very little on the tin, except for mandatory large health warnings, so there are no exotic-sounding names of tobacco varieties in the blend or of far-away places where it was grown.
(A bit of a disappointment. Old Holborn proudly states on its packet: "It takes 25 varieties of premium grade tobacco, harvested from four continents, then cured gently and allowed to reach maturity, to produce the unique, full taste of Old Holborn Original." A much richer description; though it, too, is a Japan Tobacco brand, and there's likely more than tobacco in it.)

Iridescence

Fly on yarrow flowers.

Quince flower and fruit

Beautiful aren't they, furry too. This is the first year this tree has flowered, and fruited. So, apart from admiring them, we haven't settled on an end use yet (there are only three fruits this year, though).

Pot marigold orange

The pleasures of fennel

Our beautiful fennel plant. It's about 6 feet tall. This is common fennel. The fennel that has the broad, bulbous base that's eaten as a vegetable is Florence fennel.

Hoverfly on fennel flowers.

We love fennel here. My seven-year old granddaughter and I pop a few seeds in our mouth from time to time for the pleasure of the aniseed taste and the mouth-refreshing effect. If we're out in the garden, we'll often chew a frond of the leaves or a few of the small flowers. Fennel seeds are good for the digestion. They can be chewed or drunk as a tea infusion. Fennel is rich in vitamin A and contains calcium, phosphorus and potassium.

These fat, juicy undried seeds are our favourite to chew, though they do taste quite strong.

Occasionally, I like to break up a few seeds with my nails and sprinkle them on top of tobacco in a cigarette, for an aniseed-scented smoke. I remember some cigarettes years ago, I think they were Malayan, that had cloves in them with the tobacco. They were an interesting and pleasant smoke too.

I already knew that mullein was a common ingredient in herbal tobaccos, but to learn more about what herbs can be smoked, I bought the book, 'Smoke Plants of North America' by M R Ross, about the plants smoked by the Indians. There's a recipe for a smoking mixture with fennel seeds, with hops, mullein, skullcap, damiana and mint. I haven't tried this mixture, but it seems an interesting one. The author says of it that she loves "the heavy, sensual calming effect of the hops and skullcap together. Hops has a funny smell kind of like ripe cheese, but it smokes with a nice flavor and no aftertaste."

A 'warrior' garden layout

The kitchen garden layout makes an icon of a warrior with spear.

The layout started this way because of a bench positioned at the side of the garden, and the dozens of self-seeded pot marigolds from last year that were sprouting up all over the garden.

We didn't want to lose the marigolds, and did want to make the view from the bench the best in the garden. We transplanted all the marigolds to a semicircle in front of the bench, so that in full bloom there would be a mass or orange right in front (orange is said to be a healing colour). Also, and this was the original reason for them being there, marigolds are a good companion plant in the vegetable garden; grown around tomatoes and peppers to repel black and green flies.

Pot marigold extract is widely used in cosmetics. Calendula officinalis (pot marigold) ointment is used in the treatment of skin disorders, for pain, and as an antiseptic. Also, pot marigold petals sre good in salads.

We flattened a path around the marigold semicircle, and made another one up from it to the edge of the garden, as well as another right across the patch.

A lot of potatoes, still buried from last year (though I dug the garden over well), were growing, so we moved them all into a patch over on one side.

We made another, smaller, semicircle at the top, cut through by the path, and planted wheat, bought as duck feed, and red poppies (for a mini meadow or mini 'fields of Flanders').

We had proposed to harvest the wheat, grind it and make bread (with the poppy seed on top) - all as an experiment. We intended, also, to be baking the bread in an earth oven that we've made. But too much rain, and too-close planting, damaged the crop, so it'll have to be done next year.

The garden was planted with seedlings we had grown on in the greenhouse, as well as seeds planted directly in the garden. The seeds we used were from a variety of sources: some collected from last year's crops, a few packets bought in sales and some seeds left in packets bought last year - a miscellany. The idea was to use up any seeds we had around before buying any new ones, and even then to leave it up to fate a bit, seeing what presented itself in a sale, or stuck on a gardening magazine cover.

We used a few seeds collected from last year and were well-pleased with the results, so we've bought some brown paper bags off ebay, and are collecting seeds when they're ready on the plants.

This is how the planting was laid out:

Planting started.

One month ago.

Today.

Once more, a photo of the lovely 'Black Magic' sunflower.

Marigold and poppy companions

With the 'Black Magic' sunflowers.

This is the plot in the middle of the vegetable garden in which the 'Black Magic' sunflowers are growing. This plot is filled with marigolds, bordered with red poppy, and has those sunflowers in the middle in two groups of three.

The red poppies do an amazing job of attracting hover flies. The adult hover flies feed on nectar and pollen, and so aid pollination in the garden; and their larvae feed on aphids and other plant-sucking insects. I like the way a hover fly will stop mid-air, right in front of your face, and check you out.

Black Magic sunflower

This is the beautiful 'Black Magic' sunflower from Johnsons Seeds.