landrace tobacco planting

hi all, I'm relatively new to posting here though I've read through so much.

I'm in the inland pnw/intermountain area of the US in Spokane. I grow in town on a .2 acre lot around my house.

3 years ago i started trying to grow my own tobacco. i thought i would start a thread on this and see if anyone else is doing similar or if there's any interest.

in year one i ordered in 6 types of tobacco to "experiment". i had no high hopes of producing and processing it to smoke, though i am a smoker. i wanted to simply see if i could grow it, and what that was like.

i ordered Golden Burley, Virginia Bright leaf, pa Golden, Massachusetts wrapper, simox, and rustica.

that year i put in mass wrapper, rustica, and burley. in two grow bags. they grew well, got about my height (5 feet) and produced big silky leaves which i color cured by hanging at first, then by towel wrapping later. all lost their green and then i hang dried them, then jarred the leaves to age. that was 2024.

i used a casing spray on the hanging leaves, made of vegetable glycerin, honey, water, and spiced rum. this kept them pliable and let them color up before they dried out fully.

In 2025 (last year) i planted rustica, Virginia, PA, simox, and seeds i had saved from the previous year. the land race/crossed seeds i saved did great. everything got very tall, and again i processed the leaves. i planted out twice as many plants and got triple the harvest by the end. 3 quart jars full of shredded dry leaves by the end of the process.

this year i started rolling and smoking the 2024 tobacco. it's very good, i haven't bought cigarettes in a few months as i go through it. it is all varieties i grew, blended, so it's a distinct flavor. the rustica has high nicotine content, as do specific leaves on each plant.

i started my 2026 plants 6 weeks ago in the heated greenhouse. they are sizing up well and nearly too big for the pots. this year I'll plant 50% my own saved seed from last year, plus golden Burley, VA, and rustica again. i also have white mammoth variety which I'll trial a few plants to see if i like them.

I've included photos of each year and some of the process and can explain more if anyone is interested.

I'm hoping my own seed will be good, i have purposely planted those out where there is no irrigation, no protection, and will be saving seed from the ones with the best ruffly leaves again this year. rustica/high nicotine often appears as a more pronounced ruffle, and big leaves are easier to process. so i am selecting for those traits, plus drought resistance.

Hi Anji, welcome to Permies. I am trying some tobacco plants as well this year. I managed to only grow it some years ago but i was too late for French season the plants flowered but never developed viable seeds. I'm a bit earlier with an indoor start up, waiting for last frost date to plant out. The last grow i had no interest, i just hung the leaves to dry on the attic and saved them, no curing or what. I had come across them on one of my attic cleaning moments right when a friend told me he had no money to buy cigarettes and was having trouble, smoking all the buds in ashtray phase had passed. He was happy when i brought him the leaves, but quite agitated it wasn't like what he was used to. After a couple of weeks he'd smoked it and asked for more, he had got used to it and had taken a liking to the pure natural strain. But i gave up smoking years ago so my interest waned.
Last year at a landrace congress a pipe smoker gave me his landrace tobacco seed. He says it's good for cigarette smoking as well, which i don't doubt seen my experience with how quickly people turn to liking a natural option.
And a friend has obtained seeds from a country north of us, which will like our warmer climate. I'm mixing all in.
With the coming price rise in food because of the oil based industrial agriculture complex i foresee that i have a good bartering material at hand if needed.It's very strange people do not do more of their own tobacco growing with prices in Europe due to tax regulations approaching a dollar a gram. They will drive to another country and gather for all their friends and family to save a few pennies, but growing they do not think of it.
I have also done a ritual that did involve sniffing tobacco water through the nose, a very strong high nicotine one. That's very mind boggling and clearing the sinusses.

I started growing tobacco in the 1990s when I was overseas and couldn't easily buy my preferred product. I don't smoke it other than the occasional rough cigar. It's enjoyable but nothing like a good-quality cigar. Mostly I chew it. Since it is untreated and unprocessed the available nicotine content is low.

I purchased the original seeds from a company in Britain and had them mail-ordered and I have since bought seeds a few times. No recollection of what varieties. Since it was just a few seeds of course I was very careful with them, started indoors and transplanted later. I stopped bothering with that when I noticed that every year I get lots of volunteer sprouts in the garden. Now I save the seed heads and in the spring just scatter handfuls of seeds wherever I might have space and bare dirt. Hard packed dirt and clay is fine.

Surface planting is best. Tobacco seeds need sunlight to sprout so no burying or even raking needed. Just right on top bare dirt.
Pic shows size of leaves. The boot is size 14, for comparison.

trying to add photos

i had written a large post about nicotine content and flavor and the leaf patterns and lost that

at any rate each plant has more in the big leaves. just below where my arm is pointing on the photo are the best leaves.

they will sucker if you top them. they cross pollinate readily, and make enough seed for a million acres in each pod it seems. i save the seed and have far too much, it geminated really easily for me every time.

and so this year half the seed will be the landrace of these. i am going to see this winter if i can strew seed and get it to reseed itself in a patch. it hasn't so far

i do the same with sorghum and am trying to do with okra! sorghum has been somewhat a success, i get a few quarts of grain and a few pints of syrup each year. which is more than enough for my household of 2. okra i can't get to grow here beyond a few inches tall so i just keep adding seeds and hoping to get more that will ripen to seed for me.

but tobacco has been really good here. the leaves on the landrace are massive and the center of the plant is strong nicotine. the high leaves have the most flavor and any suckers.

The growing season here is just a bit too short, so I generally leave the plants to grow until there is a frost predicted, then cut them and hang them in a shed. So they don't get the nice drying time in the sun. It's usually damp and cool. Quality is better if they can dry properly before the frost. Leaves that turn yellow or brown on the growing plant taste best.

I'm also in Spokane and have been growing and curing my own tobacco, primarily Burley, and processing it into pipe tobacco. I thought I might be the only person around here doing this

I plant tobacco direct sown on wild hog rooted spots just by breaking open last years seed capsules stored in the jars in the freezer. I just scatter the microscopic seed dust on the surface after the last frost in spring. The only thing they need is picking off the green camouflage hornworms that will devour the leaves overnight. The hard part i STILL haven't figured out is how to cure the leaves so they are as desired by tobacco users as store-bought.  Mine just taste like dried leaves no matter what I try. My neighbors dont ask for anymore free tobacco once they try it because the youtube videos arent helping me perfect the craft at all. What's the secret?

I'd like to try growing Nicotiana rustica (wild tobacco) as an ornamental and for its insecticidal properties.  But, it's not an urgently needed thing - so many projects, so little time!  Sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult.

I have seen a YT video series of a fellow who was making his own pipe tobacco blends.  He got leaves of several varieties, aged them (if I recall correctly, he sweated them in plastic bags), pressed the mixed variety of leaves in a little homemade wooden press with casing (honey?  I don't quite remember, now), and hung it up in the sun to age for (several?) weeks.  Then, he took the plug out of the press and sliced it thinly with a manual food slicer, then rubbed out his blend and smoked it in a pipe.  I am endlessly curious about how and why people do things, especially anything "unplugged" or old fashioned.  I still recall my great uncles rolling their own - Bugler in a can, as I remember - using a rolling machine with a canvas web, though one of them could roll a smoke with one hand, no machine required.  Clearly, he was a professional!  Pretty darn cool for a young guy of 9 or 10 to be allowed to hang out with the old codgers while they were smoking under a big shade tree, telling tall tales about horses they'd known in their younger days (saddle horses, rather than draft horses, though all of them had farmed with horses, so must have been acquainted with plenty of draft horses, too, and likely oxen as well).

For anyone interested in the pipe tobacco curing project, I'll see if I can track down the channel and link a video or two here.  On edit, here's likely the series I was remembering, but I don't see the press aging video, so maybe I am mistaken, or maybe it was another of his videos:
 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxC94OIiSU3mYrlAJdGF591NcyBZ3eLga

And, on further edit, this is probably the plug press and flake video I was remembering, but not from the same YT channel:

Mark Wyborny wrote:I plant tobacco direct sown on wild hog rooted spots just by breaking open last years seed capsules stored in the jars in the freezer. I just scatter the microscopic seed dust on the surface after the last frost in spring. The only thing they need is picking off the green camouflage hornworms that will devour the leaves overnight. The hard part i STILL haven't figured out is how to cure the leaves so they are as desired by tobacco users as store-bought.  Mine just taste like dried leaves no matter what I try. My neighbors dont ask for anymore free tobacco once they try it because the youtube videos arent helping me perfect the craft at all. What's the secret?

I will occasionally take a whole leaf and roll a cigar. They taste Okay but nothing special, similar to any cheap cigar you can buy. Not worse, but not better. I miss good cigars but am too cheap to buy them more than once in a long while, 5-10 years. I have not perfected any way to make good tobacco but have not really tried. My problem is mold if the fall humidity levels are high, so the methods I have seen in various you tube videos don't look like they would work for me.

Tobacco will re-seed itself if there is bare ground. Most of mine is from volunteers that come up in the garden around other plants and if I see it while weeding I just leave it to grow. I will also scatter handfuls of seeds around anywhere I want something to grow and that also produces enough for my minimal needs. A few plants goes a long way!

My friend who is a long time smoker and orders tobacco leafs online that are sold as cushion filler, he says that it took him a few month to switch to pure tobacco leafs. He first mixed in a quarter then half half then a quarter then pure. He says because the commercial stuff is laced by a whole range of addictive substances. Most folk that are poor that try pure tobacco miss 'something' and return to their usual dealings.
Anji, wow your plants are beautiful! You dwarf mine that got stunted during a two month drought. how long was your drought if i may ask?  

i remember trying ceremonial tobacco from a hippy friend, and it was a very childlike high that ive always wanted to replicate. id definitely go down that rabbit hole. and no it wasnt the wacky tobaccky either