u/WinChunKing

All and all was an excellent and fun season. The Bosikappal is my all time favourite of the last 6 years. It's an amazing looking plant that has a surprisingly good yield. It cured super well and smells amazing already. Stag Horn is amazing, grows huge, excellent yield and easy to cure. It makes my list of possible regrows. Orinoco was the black sheep this year. It was slow to start, slow to grow and has a very low yield for the time it takes to grow. It cured ok but wasn't easy. I ended up with quite a few smaller, uncured leaves that I tossed. It has a great story but I wouldn't grow it again, the yield is not worth the time and effort put into growing it. I'll be leaving all the tobacco in bins for a few weeks and bag it to age down the road. It will sit 12-18 months keeping my rotation stash well stocked with yearly additions since 2021. Next up, I'll be doing GC-1, Little yellow and more Bosikappal next year.

Apart from the white flies infestation and a mould scare on the Stag Horns everything went according to plan. A perfect run is impossible, there's always something that's going to happen, which is why very close monitoring is key.

I decided to threshe the Stag Horns because the stems were huge and still very wet even if the lamina itself was ready. The wet stems were causing some white fuzz on the lamina when the leaves were hanging. I took them down, put them in the blazing sun today and then took them in and did a manual crush and picked out all the stems and tossed them.

This is the Bosikappal. I put the lid on to keep natural heat inside and I will be putting the bins outside in the sun lid on to add some heat. The lids also make it easy to shake the leaves around. In the past years I was using cardboard boxes, worked ok but these bins are an upgrade, they keep more heat in and will last for a lifetime. The Orinoco and Stag Horn needs more time on the line.

I'm doing it slowly, no rush. I'll do the Orinocos and Stag Horns next week as they have a bit of curing/drying left to do.

The flies are not damaging the leaves but it's just super annoying considering this cure room is in my apartment. I shook the lines to get some to drop/fly away and brushed a ton of them off. When the leaves are fully cured and dry I'll give them a final brush before putting them in bins. Everything else is going well...it's almost impossible to have a tobacco run from seed to smoke with zero surprises. I can live with this one, it's annoying but manageable.

The Bosikappal continues to be possibly the best tobacco I've grown yet. After being an absolute fun time/success growing, it is colour curing really well, no issues and the smell right now a couple of weeks in is absolutely enibriating. Smells like warm honey and hot baking bread. I am feeling very confident at this point that it will be my first recurring variety.