Each year, I usually buy my tobacco seeds from LeafOnly.com. I like their selection, and I've had good luck with germination and growth of seeds from there. I have had a light level of luck with seeds from my tobacco flowers, but we'll touch on that later on in this article. You can select any types you like, but in Arkansas I've had good luck with Havana, Virginia, and Burley. This year, these are the varieties I'm going to be growing: Havana Long Leaf, Turkish Basma, Indian Rustica, Golden Seal Special Burley, Small Black Mammoth, Virginia Gold. When you get your first order of tobacco seeds you'll notice they are very, very small!
I usually seed start my tobacco plants indoors. This is usually done 6-8 weeks before your projected last frost date. I use the Farmer's Almanac to see my projected last frost date. This year, I started my seeds on March 18th, 2025. I start mine in trays, usually EZ Foil Cake Pans. For my soil, I usually get seed starting soil from my local Wal-Mart. I use the Jiffy Seed Starter, and have had good luck with it. Seeds aren't planted, they are sprinkled lightly on the surface of the soil. From there, I give them a misting of water.
After this is done, I put the plastic covers on the trays and put them on a rack. Then, I position my LED grow lights over them. You can buy any of these you want. I have a ton of them that I bought from Amazon over the years. These are an example of the kind that I use. I usually set mine to warm white light during the day, and then the darker purple at night. After this, I give mine a light misting of water each day. I don't let the soil get super wet, but I don't let the soil dry out, either. From there, we wait!
When they sprout varies. I began seeing mine sprout on March 23rd, and the last ones sprouted on March 25th. So that's anywhere from 5 to 7 days after seed starting. This can vary, I've had some sprout after that. So, if they don't sprout within a week, don't give up on them, they may sprout a few days after the week mark. As mentioned earlier, I continue to give them a light misting of water each day. I keep my covers on for humidity, because I've seen good luck doing it this way. But it's up to you how you do it.
It's April 29th (42 days since seed starting), and the sprouts are getting bigger. The weather is also starting to warm up, staying above 60° F at night, and hovering between 70-80° F outside during the day. So, I'm going to transplant these sprouts into individual trays and move them outside. This year, I had a lot of luck with my plants sprouting. I ended up with a lot of sprouts to transplant! In total, what we had sprout this year:
Homegrown Perique (2024) - 18 plants
Havana Long Leaf - 30 plants
Turkish Basma - 36 plants
Indian Rustica - 36 plants
Golden Seal Special Burley - 36 plants
Small Black Mammoth - 36 plants
Virginia Gold - 36 plants
Total - 228 plants
Note, all these plants won't make it until the end. You will have some die. That's okay, it's normal. Each plant will yield, on average, 4-6oz (113-170g) of dry, finished tobacco. If all 228 plants made it until the end, that could be as much as 39kg (or 85 pounds) of finished tobacco (over 900 cans of loose snus!). That's a lot of snus! I don't usually end up with that much, though. Don't expect a lot at first as you're learning the process. My 2023 crop yielded just 168g, but that was my first year going all the way through the process.
I usually move these into a potting mix. This year I used Expert Gardener Potting Mix, acquired from Wal-Mart. A note, I'm not getting paid for any of these links, I'm just supplying them so I can fully explain my process and what I'm doing. I use the little 6-cell trays, then put those into a bigger tray. From there, I move them out to my greenhouse.
For me, I bought a cheap, basic greenhouse from Wayfair. I think this one is the model we purchased, it's a little over $100. We've had this one for several years, I think we got it around 2020 or so. Mine got a little wind damaged over the years, so the front door isn't there anymore, it's just a piece of clear sheeting, but it still works. What can I say, I'm cheap. I usually will leave it open during the day and close it at night. As far as watering, I don't let the soil get too dry, but I also don't let it get too damp. From here, we'll continue to keep an eye on the plants, and watering them, before we move on to the next step!
In the past, I've grown my tobacco plants in containers. And, that has usually worked pretty well. However, this year I wanted to try and grow in the ground. We have a lot of land where we live, so we figured why not, let's give it a try. So, we have this side area of our property we used to use for pigs, but we are putting our pigs somewhere else. This year, we took a tractor to it and tilled up a good amount. I made rows by hand using a hoe. The tobacco isn't ready to go into the ground yet, it probably won't be until June, but this is a start!
So, I'm not quite ready to put these into the ground just yet. They're still growing, and still need some time. Previously, I've had these plants in the little trays. And from there, you can usually plant in the ground. In the past, I've also done the cups. I've done it differently each year, but each method generally works. I had some extra time this year before planting into the ground, so I figured I'd go ahead and move these plants from the trays into the cups. You can use any cups, though. I use old plant cups, and I also use red Solo cups. As long as you put holes in the bottom of the cups, it'll be fine! Today I went ahead and moved all of them into the cups, and it also let me do a comparison of what I started with and what I have now, so I have an idea of what we have lost. Loss is normal, don't sweat it, it happens every year! But, this year I've done better than usual and didn't lose as much!
What we have on hand now:
Homegrown Perique (2024) - 14 plants (lost 4)
Havana Long Leaf - 28 plants (lost 2)
Turkish Basma - 36 plants (no loss)
Indian Rustica - 34 plants (lost 2)
Golden Seal Special Burley - 36 plants (no loss)
Small Black Mammoth - 35 plants (lost 1)
Virginia Gold - 34 (lost 2)
Total - 217 total plants (lost 11 plants)
Next Steps (June 2025)
So, I came back fron a recent trip to Miami to find the area I had tilled for tobacco growth completely overgrown with grass. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have the time to re-till this one up. Also, the land I'm in the process of buying is taking longer to close than expected, so I'm not able to start growing on it just yet.
What does that mean? Yep. You guess it. I'm having to go back to the bucket method for now. I may be able to plant in the ground later, I'm not sure. But for now, my plants are outgrowing their cups and I have to get them into the ground, or at least into containers with more dirt for their root system. So, this month I'll be starting on getting that process going. It worked in the past, so I'm not opposed to it, but, it wasn't what I wanted to do this year.
Over the past several days, I've been working on transplanting into buckets / containers / pots. So far I've done almost 122 of my 200ish plants. I've been using a mix of buckets I had on the farm already, as well as some fabric pots I bought on Amazon. For soil, I got a few loads of sandy loam from our local garden center which has worked out pretty well. I'll continue to work on this in the coming weeks and see how many I can get moved into buckets and containers. It's warm here, almost 90 F every day, so the plants are ready for the sun!
So, today I decided to plant the rest of my tobacco plants into the ground. I tried something I saw on Facebook - not tilling the ground, but putting down landscape fabric and cutting slits and planting into the ground. We'll see if it works. Today I planted 13 Virginia, 12 Mammoth, 10 Havana, 17 Turkish, 18 Burley, and 20 Rustica, for a title of 90 plants. We'll see how these turn out! So now, everything is out of the greenhouse and either planted in containers or planted in the ground.
About a month after planting that test batch in the back with the landscape fabric, it did surprisingly well. These plants are growing much better (as expected) than my container plants. The only thing that isn't doing much is the Rustica. But, the Rustica in the front isn't doing much, either. For some reason, I always have trouble growing Rustica here, so I suspect that's one I'm going to skip on next year. But, it is interesting to note that landscape fabric and planting in the slits, even if the ground isn't tilled, actually works really well!
After a long, hot summer, it is time to begin the curing process. In the past, I would cut the plants down and immediately hang them in my barn to cure. This year, I'm trying something different. I've heard others say that they cut the plants, then let them wilt in the field before hanging them up. So, this year I'm going to give that a try. Today, I cut down all my plants, and laid them on the ground (or landscape fabric) to begin the wilting process. From what I read, this could take a few hours, to a day. And, if I do it too long it can give the tobacco sunburn. So, I'm going to leave them out for a 24 hour period, and then begin hanging them up in my barn tomorrow and start the air curing process. Another different thing - this year I'm stalk curing. Last year, I cured the leaves by themselves. This year, I'm curing (and hanging) the whole stalk. So, another different thing I'm trying out!
This morning, I went out and began the process of curing. I think I may have left them out to wilt too long, however, because there were a lot of 'crispy' leaves. Some were already golden, and some were dark brown. So, does this mean I have a mix of sun and air cured? I think so. This year, I hung in my stables instead of my barn. More constant airflow that way. I started with 228 plants, and today I hung 131 to cure. I lost around 97 from seed starting to now. That's not great, but I also have way more plants this year than I ever have before, so I count that as a win. Last year, it took several weeks for them to air cure, so we'll see how fast this process goes. This was the first year I did stalk curing. I started by putting a hole in the stalk and hanging that way. I used baling twine again this year. But, this method proved too time consuming, so I ended up just tying them to a piece of baling twine instead. It worked, they all hung up! So, now we wait until the curing process is finished!
Tobacco Planting Summary
228 sprouted / 122 in containers / 90 in ground / 131 cured / total loss of 97 plants
Homegrown Perique (2024)
18 sprouted / 14 in containers / 0 in ground / 11 cured / 7 lost
Havana Long Leaf
30 sprouted / 18 in containers / 10 in ground / 28 cured / 2 lost
Turkish Basma
36 sprouted / 18 in containers / 17 in ground / 30 cured / 6 lost
Indian Rustica
36 sprouted / 12 in containers / 20 in ground / 0 cured - lost all, they didn't grow
Golden Seal Special Burley
36 sprouted / 18 in containers / 18 in ground / 29 cured / 7 lost
Small Black Mammoth
36 sprouted / 24 in containers / 12 in ground / 22 cured / 14 lost
I noted above that I lost one, but another one grew by surprise in the greenhouse, so I gained it back.
Virginia Gold
36 sprouted / 18 in containers / 18 in ground / lost 0
Same story as above, but two more grew in greenhouse, so I gained them back!
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Cost Summary (So Far)
My 2025 Total Costs
Tobacco Seeds (LeafOnly.com) - $47.80
Seed Starter Soil (6 Bags Jiffy, Wal-Mart) - $35.82
Potting Mix for Transplanting (Wal-Mart) - $9.97
Soil (Local Plant Shop) - $143.56
Fabric Pots (Amazon) - $117.66
Total So Far - $354.81
Things I already had:
I'm not including the Greenhouse in the cost because I already had it and use it for vegetables and other stuff. But that is around $109.99 if you want to factor it in. The plant trays I already had, I acquired them over the years from local greenhouses. The shelving/racks I use I've had for several years. You can find them locally used on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for pretty cheap, I spent around $40 for two of mine. Once you buy many of these things, you can re-use them each year. The LED lights ($39.99) and pans ($14.88) I use for growing, I save and re-use those each year so I don't have to buy those yearly, either. If I added in the cost of these things, that's an extra $204.85 in cost, but that's stuff I re-use from year to year. Your first year, you may have more out of pocket cost in growing, but that will lessen in your second year.
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