How to Grow Chewing Tobacco

Chewing tobacco doesn’t grow on tree. It is tobacco that undergoes further processing after being harvested to make it chewable. There are reasons why some people chew tobacco whereas the others prefer to smoke cigarettes. Therefore, if you are curious about how to grow chewing tobacco, you need to understand first why you should chew tobacco, what its risks are, how to grow tobacco, and how to make it chewable. Everything will be covered here.

Reasons to Chew Tobacco

Chewing tobacco is one of many ways to enjoy smokeless tobacco. Tobacco is consumed orally by chewing tobacco leaves, plugs, twists, lozenges, pellets, or strips or putting them between the gum and the inner wall of the cheek. Nicotine will then be extracted from them and absorbed by the mouth tissue. The brownish mixture of the saliva and tobacco, along with the tobacco dregs, can be either spat out or swallowed. Besides chewing, tobacco can also be consumed smokeless by snuffing, either wet through mouth or dry through nose.

Why do people chew tobacco instead of smoking it? There are several reasons why consuming smokeless tobacco is preferred.

1. Many people believe that chewing tobacco is less dangerous than smoking cigarette, especially because chewing doesn’t involve inhaling hot and dirty smokes.

2. Because it is smokeless, it doesn’t invade nearby people. As long as you know how and where to spit properly, people around you least likely be bothered by your habit.

3. People who chew tobacco also smell less unpleasant than those who smoke cigars do.

4. Chewing tobacco suppresses your appetite due to one practical reason: you cannot chew food when you are chewing something else.

Many people chew tobacco to make the physical and psychological anguish of quitting smoking easier to bear. For those people, chewing tobacco provides an easy transition before they can abandon tobacco consumption completely.

What Are the Risks of Chewing Tobacco?

All methods to consume tobacco are risky. Therefore, even chewing that doesn’t involve burning anything and inhaling dirty smokes actually also carries some risks. In fact, many positive aspects of chewing tobacco are actually not decisive and absolute.

Here are some known risks of chewing tobacco that you should be aware of.

1. Although chewing tobacco is less dangerous than smoking cigars, this doesn’t mean chewing tobacco is safe. Your body stills take a substantial amount of nicotine, a very powerful poison found in various types of insecticide.

2. Although chewing tobacco causes less harm to the respiratory organs, it hurts the mouth and everything in it more severely than smoking does. Chewing tobacco causes gum problems (gum diseases and recession), leukoplakia (whitish patches in the mouth that may become cancerous), tooth staining and damage, and cancerous growths in oral areas, including lips, gums, cheek, tongue, and floor and roof of the mouth.

3. Chewing tobacco also adversely affects digestive system. It increases the risk of cancer in the esophagus, stomach and pancreas.

4. Chewing tobacco also increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases. In fact, the majority of deaths associated with chewing tobacco are a result of health failure and not cancer.

5. The appetite suppressant feature of chewing tobacco and nicotine consumption might be good for overweight people, but for anorectic people, it can cause a serious health problem.

Chewing tobacco is still risky. A belief that chewing tobacco is completely safe, especially if compared with smoking cigars, is a misunderstanding. If you chew tobacco as a transition before you can abandon cigars, you still need to struggle a lot because chewing tobacco also causes addiction associated with nicotine consumption. Besides, for some people, chewing tobacco is not as enjoyable as feeling the warm smokes in your mouth when you smoke cigars. Nevertheless, chewing tobacco is still safer for people around you and safer for the environment, as you don’t emit gaseous elements that hurt people and the Mother Nature. This is the most plausible rationale why chewing tobacco is worthwhile.

How to Grow Chewing Tobacco

There is no such thing as chewing tobacco that grows on tree. If you want to make chewing tobacco on your own, you have to start by growing tobacco leaves and then you need to know how to make the leaves chewable. Not all types of chewable tobacco can be prepared at home. Dissolvable chewing tobacco is mostly manufactured in a factory. Therefore, if you plan to make chewing tobacco, you need to be aware that the end result of your effort is flavored spit tobacco that you can chew and then spit out or swallow (gut). It doesn’t dissolve in your mouth.

How to Grow Tobacco

Your magnum opus starts with growing tobacco leaves that you can later use for either smoking or chewing. Growing tobacco at home is a great hobby for tobacco lovers, be they smokers or chewers. Cigarettes are not cheap, and chewing tobacco and dissolvable tobacco products are even more expensive. By growing tobacco and making the leaves chewable at home, you can save a lot of money and enjoy great leisure activity when you have free time to kill. Before you grow tobacco, you need to take the following factors into consideration.

1. Tobacco seed

If you live in a place where tobacco is cultivated, you can buy tobacco transplants, thereby skipping the pain of taking care of tobacco seeds; however, if there is no tobacco farm nearby, your best bet is to buy tobacco seeds and plant them in your garden. There are numerous tobacco varieties available. There are varieties for cigarettes, cigars, pipe, snuff, and chew. The best way to choose the right seed is by asking the vendor. Due to the minute size of tobacco seeds, the seeding phase of growing tobacco must be done with caution. We will discuss more about this phase later in this article.

2. Soil

Fortunately, tobacco is an extremely resilient plant that can grow on any type of soil, so no matter where you live, you can always grow tobacco. The only thing you should know about soil is that its lightness affects the color of the leaves. Lighter soil grows lighter leaves whereas darker soil grows darker leaves. Tobacco also grows well on soil with proper drainage. Despite its resilience, tobacco, however, is extremely delicate and vulnerable especially in the earliest phase of its growth. Proper care is needed when you are in the seeding phase.

3. Weather and climate

Weather and climate affect the quality of the harvested tobacco leaves. Tobacco grows best in a dry and warm place. Too much precipitation is bad for tobacco as it may cause the leaves to become flaky, crumbly and thin. The soil where the tobacco is grown can receive snow, but the snow must not be fall in the period between planting and harvest, which usually lasts between 3 to 4 months.

Of all the three factors above, seed is considered the most important. Tobacco seeds are so minute and fragile that without proper treatment, they may already die before they show any seedlings. During the earliest phase of tobacco development, the seeds must be planted in soil that is constantly monitored. We will discuss more about that in the tobacco growing steps below.

1. Prepare the right medium for planting tobacco seeds.

Due to the tiny size of tobacco seeds, it is highly recommended that you don’t plant the seeds directly in the open soil with direct exposure to sunray. The seeds need moisture and sunray to germinate, but too much sunray may dry the soil and kill the seeds. It is recommended that you plant the seeds in a flat or container with fine soil. Make sure that the planting medium is shaded to protect the seeds from excessive sunray exposure. Also make sure that you spray the medium twice a day to maintain its moisture. If the soil dries quickly due to the dry climate, you can cover it with plastic to maintain moisture level. Be sure to regularly open the cover to prevent mold infestation.

2. Plant the seeds until you see seedlings.

Plant the seeds in the medium and keep taking care of the soil. After about two weeks, seedlings must already appear, but you may not be able to see them clearly due to their tiny size. Wait for about one month and the seedlings should be about 1 inch tall. Don’t forget to weed the soil to remove unwanted plants and seedlings and to give enough space to the growing plants. After about two weeks, the seedlings should reach the height of 2 to 3 inches. At this stage, it is safe for you to transplant your plants to open soil; however, if you think that the sun is still too harsh, transplant them to another flat until they are large enough to bear the harsh sunray, i.e. when they are about 5 inches tall.

3. Take care of your growing tobacco.

After you transplant them to your garden, the plants should grow steadily until they reach maturity after about 2 months. Don’t forget to fertilize and manure them and free them from unwanted disturbances, including aphids and hornworms, which can shred your tobacco leaves into pieces. Pick the leaves when they are big enough. You can wait for another month to allow your plants to bloom. If you expect bigger leaves, you can remove the buds, but if you plan to start another growing season, you may want to keep the buds as the seeds within are enough to fill your entire garden area with young tobacco seedlings.

4. Cure the leaves.

This stage requires your patience as you will do nothing but seeing your tobacco leaves to dry, which may take months to complete. Curing tobacco leaves means allowing the leaves to dry. There are many ways to do so. You can hang the leaves under the sun or inside your barn. Hanging the leaves under direct sunray allows faster curing because the leaves will turn brown after about 2 months; however, you need to beware of precipitation as water, moisture and snow will damage the leaves. Drying the leaves in a hothouse or on the dashboard of your car is a good idea to prevent the leaves from being touched by water. You can also hang the leaves inside the barn to protect it from rain; however, because the leaves are not exposed to sunray, the curing process may take months to more than a year.

After you cure the tobacco leaves, they are ready for anything you want them to be. Shred them properly and you can have fun with them any way you want. You can make cigars or cigarettes from them, put them in your pipe, snuff them, or chew them. If you plan to make them chewable leaves, the section below will guide you to make your tobacco leaves chewable.

How to Make Chewing Tobacco

To make the tobacco leaves chewable, here are the steps that you should take after you cure them.

1. Shred the leaves evenly. You can use a blender in your kitchen to do that.

2. Add apple flavor by heating two cups of apple juice to a simmer. Keep heating until the juice becomes thick.

3. Mix the shredded leaves with the apple paste proportionally.

4. Put the mixture in a bag and store it in your refrigerator.

5. Your tobacco leave mixture is ready for chewing.

You can experiment with other flavors to discover more excitements when chewing tobacco. Use the juice of various types of fruit to give different tastes to the tobacco. You can also practice with different tobacco leave varieties and tobacco leaves with different levels of curing. Leaves that are dried longer have mellow taste that you will want to enjoy in your mouth. Every stage of the growing and processing phases of tobacco leaves is itself an exciting experience that you can enjoy, especially if you are a real tobacco lover. Therefore, grow your tobacco now and happy chewing!