Stryker - Belton,TX 2010

Stryker took Winners dog two days in a row.

16 months old and he's showing great promise in the show ring.

Total weight of 2010 tobacco crop

with all plants now cured and dried, it's just a waiting game now for them to age enough to smoke. so I brought out the scale to see what the crop produced and I've got a whopping 2.9lbs of tobacco from my measly 25 plants. So per plant I got somewhere around 1.8 ounces.

Not a bad haul for my first year.

This coming year I'm planning to plant 850~900 plants and if my yield figures for this year hold true for next year, that equates to about 100lbs of cured tobacco

So how many cigarettes will that make?

I weighted how much tobacco I use per cigarette and it averages 0.0338 oz each, so 100lbs will make over 47,000 cigarettes.

I smoke 20 a day or 140 sticks a week x 52 weeks = 7,280 a year

so 100lbs of tobacco should last me about 6 years

Now for the economics of grow-your-own

a pack in Texas now is around $5.50 average or $0.275 each stick. so 100lbs or 47,000 cigarettes would cost me $13,000 if I bought them from a store.

Total investment for my 2011 crop is estimated to be about $650 (water, fertilizer, storage, etc) or about 30 cents a pack!

2010 tobacco season is over, ramping up for 2011

Well my first year at growing tobacco was very successful, I only had 30 plants, but I got a double-crop because I left the roots after the first harvest and they produced more leaf from the suckers that were left to grow. Not near as much as the first growth, but made up for losses from my experiments in curing.

I've gathered up a lot of various strains and varieties from friends and will have 20+ varieties to grow next year.

The new growing area will be 60 x 130 feet and I figure I'll be able to get 800+ plants (average 50 plants of each variety)

A big thanks to the folks at howtogrowtobacco.com I learned a lot about tobacco this year and a special thanks to Lonnie, Mark, Bob and Jack for all their valuable replies to my hundreds of questions.

2011 should be a bumper-crop year