How to Grow Tobacco Hydroponically

Finding out how to grow tobacco hydroponically is quite importantly for some people. Tobacco has been around for centuries and people use them to make cigars or cigarettes. In this modern day, people are no longer rolling their own cigarettes. They prefer to buy the commercially grown tobacco products or simply buy store-bought cigarettes. We all know the damage of smoking cigarettes comes from these commercially grown tobacco products. In the making, harmful toxins must be used and thus damaging our health. If people keep continue consuming these commercially grown tobacco products, it seems to be impossible to avoid consuming the harmful toxins in any ways.

Luckily enough, you still have some options to keep enjoying your favorite tobacco products without having to consume the toxins. It is by growing and harvesting your own tobacco at home. If you do everything by yourself, you must know that there is no toxins in there and thus it is safe. Always remember that purchasing and using commercially grown tobacco products can be truly harmful. You need to keep it in mind that there are always toxic chemicals used in tobacco production. The chemicals can easily get into your body when you smoke the cigarettes. That is not even the last thing you have to worry about. It is believed that tobacco companies have to produce tons of tobacco in order to fulfill the demand of the production. To keep the production going, they have to grow tobacco in massive scale. They do it in immense fields of tobacco plants, usually located in colder areas of the state. Tobacco plants that are forcefully grown in such massive quantities like that are not going to be in its best quality because the plantations are home to array of pests and diseases, including rats. That is why the farmers taking care of the plantation is forced to use pesticides and fungicides to kill the pest. Those pesticides and fungicides are toxic. Therefore, it is true that even before the tobacco are harvested and go into production, they already contain toxic chemicals from the pesticides and fungicides.

So why growing your own tobacco? There are many benefits of doing so. The best benefit of all is that you grow this tobacco for your own personal use. As the result, you do not have to do large quantity. Growing small number of tobacco plants does not require too much space, time, and skill, especially if you do not have much spare time. Keeping small amount of plants like that prevent pests and diseases to invade your tobacco plants. You have total control of your plants and you have the right to do whatever you want with the plants. Basically, beside saving your health, growing your own tobacco and then rolling your own cigarettes will make you save money even more. We all know that cigarettes are simply expensive because of the taxes. Growing your own cigarettes means no taxes waiting to be paid.

To grow tobacco at home, the best method that you can try is the hydroponic method. By using that method, you can grow tobacco easily without having to put too much effort in it. To understand to grow tobacco hydroponically, you need to learn quite a bit. Below are some of the information about growing tobacco, especially about to grow tobacco hydroponically. Everything is done step by step, starting from selecting the tobacco seeds until harvesting the tobacco that you grow on your very own. Follow the step-by-step down below to make sure that you can successfully grow tobacco with hydroponic system.

Selecting Tobacco Seeds for Your Plants

Finding the right seed for your hydroponic tobacco is very essential. Usually, tobacco seeds can be purchased both online and offline. When choosing the seeds to plant, you need to understand that there are quite a lot of tobacco seed varieties that you can choose from. Among them are cigar tobacco seeds, snuff tobacco seeds, and also pipe tobacco seeds. Based on some people who have tried growing tobacco hydroponically, the best kind of seed to choose is the cigar tobacco one. It is easier to grow and the price is also relatively cheaper. You can get the seeds from online shop with fair price. You can also find the seeds in plant stores. Make sure that you choose the best-quality seeds so that the final result of your tobacco plant is going to be great.

Preparing Soil Mixture for Tobacco Plants

Besides of the seeds, you also need to prepare the soil. You will plant the tobacco hydroponically but that does not mean that you need no soil for the plants. The soil for growing tobacco is quite special. It has to be nutrient-rich soil that has the ability to retain quite a large amount of water. This is why you cannot just use regular soil from your backyard. Regular soil does not have enough nutrients and also has numerous of chemicals that makes it difficult to work with. The simplest solution of choosing the soil for your tobacco plant is using potting soil. Most potting soil sold at stores are already completed by beneficial microbes and also fungi. They are great to help feeding the roots of the plants. If this kind of soil is used in hydroponic growing medium, it is believed that the soil will have a good water holding capacity. Potting soil planted on the hydroponic medium is also rich in nutrient. This is why the best kind of soil for tobacco plants, especially tobacco plants grown in hydroponic medium is the potting soil. Potting soil can easily be bought in plant stores. You can also get them online if you want. If finding potting soil is hard, you can use regular soil. However, you need to mix them first with some fertilizers and also with some water to make the texture damper.

Preparing Hydroponics Systems for the Tobacco Plants

Hydroponic system is a popular method to grow tobacco. However, a lot of people think it is expensive to buy or expensive to built. People also think that the system is excessively complicated to build. This is not true at all. Hydroponic system is not expensive or complicated to build. The simplest form of hydroponic system is the DWC or deep-water culture. This type of hydroponic costs nothing at all and very simple to maintain.

if you want to built this or deep-water culture hydroponic system, all you need to prepare are:
-5 gallon bucket with lid
-Aluminum foil tape, you can replace it with black spray paint
-1/2-inch PVC 90 degree angle
-inch diameter vinyl tube
-air stone
-air pump
-net pot
-5/8-inch neoprene grommet

Beside of the materials above, you also need to prepare a growing media. Considering that there are numerous types of growing medias for any plants with hydroponics method, you need to know that the growing media to choose is the one with some weights. The reason is because tobacco plants can grow more than 6 feet tall and the growing media must be able to contain the entire plants.

Now that you have gathered all the materials, including the growing media, now it is time to built the deep-water culture hydroponic system for your tobacco plants.

Below are the instructions to make the simplest deep-water culture hydroponic system for your tobacco plants:

1. The first thing that you have to do is cutting a hole in the bucket lid. The hole is better be circular so that you can place the net pot in the hole of the bucket lid. If the net pot is not circular, follow the shape when you make the hole on the lid. Keep it in mind that the lip on the pot should touch the bucket lid all the way around.

2. The next step is preparing the bucket. As the main component of the DWC hydroponic structure, the bucket must be prepared precisely. You need to use a drilling tool, like hole-saw, to drill a hole on the bottom of the bucket but without damaging the floor of the bucket. After that, place the neoprene grommet and also the 90 degree PVC. Arrange the PVC towards the top of the bucket.

3. Now that everything is in place, you need to make sure that the entire bucket is lightproof. The entire thing needs to be lightproof so that free from algae or from fungi. They can totally damage the root of the tobacco plants. In order to make the bucket lightproof, you need to spray black paint over the outside of the bucket and also over the outside of the lid. You can also use aluminum foil tape. Make sure that you only spray or tape the outside of the structure and not the inside.

4. After you are completely sure that the bucket is lightproof, put together the vinyl tube and the 90-degree PVC and place them on the top of the bucket. The reason to place the PVC on the top of the bucket is to see the water level easier.

5. The last thing to do in the process of making this DWC hydroponic is to drill a small hole on the bucket lid. Make the hole on the outer edge so that the hole can pass the air tube to make room for the air stone. Now, place the air stone on the bottom of the bucket. Make sure that it is flat. After that, install the air pump near the bucket. Make sure that the air pump is off the ground so that the water from the DWC hydroponic is not getting into the pump.

The DWC hydroponic system is ready to use. All you need to do now is adding the growth media (potting soil), some water, some nutrients or fertilizers, and the tobacco seeds or tobacco plants. In order to keep the tobacco plants healthy, keep the water level at 1 inch above the bottom of the net pot. Also make sure that the tobacco plant you grow gets lots of sunlight. If you are successfully growing tobacco with this method, you will get toxin-free tobacco in no time.

Harvesting and Curing the Tobacco Leaf

Now that you know how to grow tobacco hydroponically, you also need to know how to harvest and cure the leaf. The first thing that you need to know about harvesting tobacco leaf is the leaf must begin to turn yellow. It means that the leaf are ready to harvest. Usually, the yellowish color starts appear first from the bottom of the plant and then make its way to the top. As the leaf turn yellow, you can harvest them. The yellowing on the leaf happens in like a couple of weeks and not at the same time. That is why you must harvest the leaf probably one by one from time to time.

After the leaves are harvested, you need to cure and dry the leaf. Freshly harvested tobacco leaves are still full of moisture. It is not good at all to be used as cigar filling. You can dry the leaf by many methods until the leaf are brown. Some of the best methods to dry and cure the leaf are including placing the leaf under direct sunlight or just place them in dry place so that all the moistures are gone. When the tobacco leaves are dried completely, you can use them to make cigar.

Growing tobacco hydroponically is not easy but it is completely doable, especially if you follow the step by step above precisely. When you successfully grow tobacco on your own, you can make rolling cigar as much as you like. It will cost you less than store-bought cigarettes. Beside of that, you can at least minimize the harmful chemicals in store-bought cigarettes when you have your own tobacco. That is the good point of knowing how to grow tobacco hydroponically.

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