Backyard Botanist: Caring for Your Tobacco, and Two New Plants
Virginia Bright Leaf tobacco plant, ready to be repotted. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
Outdoor container gardening tends to be dry, even with the stormy summer we\'ve had. For this project, we used a mix of heavy, organic peat and regular houseplant potting soil. The potting soil helps retain moisture. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
Because tobacco is such a heavy feeder, it\'s important to make sure they\'re well fertilized. We mixed a small handful of organic tomato fertilizer in with the soil. Make sure you don\'t use too much fertilizer - it can shock the plant. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
The extensive root system means the plant is ready to grow into a larger container. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
After the pot is full of the soil mixture, make a small hole in in the top of the soil for the plant. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
Gently set the plant into the dirt, being sure that it is completely beneath the soil. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
When you repot any plant, you want to be sure that it\'s completely in the soil, with no roots exposed. Once it\'s set, you can water the plant into the container. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
Virginia Bright Leaf next to a significantly larger White Orinoco plant. Hopefully the Virginia Bright Leaf will catch up in a few weeks. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
The beginnings of a White Orinoco Flower. We left one plant with flowers, but deadheaded the rest of the crop. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
The darker, denser leaves on top mean the plant is still growing in height. The lighter colored leaves at the bottom mean that it needs a little more fertilizer. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
We sprinkled a handful of fertilizer on the top of the soil and watered it in. With tobacco, you want to keep it well watered. I use about a gallon or two of water in each pot. \<em\>Kevin Robinson/Chicagoist\<\/em\>
With the long, sunny days and stormy weather, our tobacco plants are doing great. They're over three feet tall at this point, with large, leafy foliage and thick, firm stems. In fact they're doing so well that they've begun to flower. We've picked the buds off all but one of the plants (as we intend to harvest them as a crop, rather than grow them for ornamentation). Growing flowers will sap the plant's energy, and it will focus on flowering instead of producing leaves. Tobacco is an ornamental plant as well as a cash crop, so either option is fine, depending on your gardening goals. We also added a bit of fertilizer to the pots, as tobacco is a heavy-feeding species.
I've also recently gotten a few small Virgina Bright Leaf plants, which need to be potted up as well. It seemed like a good time to talk about how to maintain large tobacco plants in a container garden, while taking stock of how the original White Orinoco plants are doing.
In a few more weeks, the flowering plant will have produced flowers, and we'll be ready to take our first harvest from the rest of the crop. If the weather stays wet and warm, we should be able to harvest leaves from them three or four times before mid-October. In the meantime, I'm hoping the Virgina Bright Leaf will catch up the White Orinoco plants.
