Anybody here grown their own tobacco before?
I thought I'd give it a little go so I've just ordered some GV seeds.

Looks fairly straight forward from what I've seen and read online. I'll probably only start off by growing the one plant, and if all goes well I'd grow a few more.

If anybody has experience with doing this could you share some tips, or advice?

best bet give up.... Saves having to give up later

Is that talking from experience or are you just guessing it'll be hard and time consuming?

i was referring to giving up smoking not growing? Deliriums are nice

Oh right. Well that's not what this thread is about lol...

I hate to be a party pooper but I think you may have to pay duty on home grown tobacco

I know but being an ex smoker makes me feel the need to point these matters out

As far as I know, it's legal to grow your own tobacco as long as it is to be smoked by yourself, however the usual duty obligations still apply once your tobacco is in a form in which it can be smoked.

Edited at 11:40 Sat 17/03/12 (GMT)

and how do they keep tabs on who is growing their own tobacco?

Exactly lol. It's not like growing weed where you'd have UV lights giving off stupid amounts of heat and using tons of electricity.
It just grows like any other plant, only with more care & attention.

^ Thats the stuff you want tho Jack Tobacco is nasty stuff lol!

Never heard of people growing tobacco tho to be honest, I'm sure it would save you an awful lot of money tho if you can't give up.

You're absolutely right I apologise, no one has ever been caught breaking the law
You are right there is no illegality in growing tobacco whatsoever.

On a more serious note, you may find that you do indeed need hydroponic equipment as our climatical conditions are very different to those of the tobacco growing nations.

You mention GV seeds I'm assuming that to be Golden Virginia, which is grown in Virginia USA and has a lot higher temperatures than us and is a drier heat, it in fact has it's own micro climate caused by the Atlantic on one side and the Blue ridge mountains on the other.

I would have thought to be successful in your venture at the very least you would need a greenhouse and a sprayer for "fine mist" watering - but I am no Alan Titchmarsh

I be interested in the drying process as well....Hmmmmm going to have to do some research now.

Let us know how you get on please. I think it will be a really interesting project and possibly one that others might well follow. Good luck with it

I'd personally rather encourage alcoholism on these forums over smoking .

I quit 3 years ago and still get the odd craving, kids reading this bare that in mind. No one made me understand that when I started

Interesting...

@g_k

Those were my thoughts at first as well, but after doing some research it seems that the climate in the UK isn't actually that bad for tobacco plants (GV included).
I've read quite a few different guides by different companies and the only time that you need to think about temperatures is after you've sown the seeds and need to wait for a couple of weeks for them to germinate.

And I can't tell whether or not you were being sarcastic when you said:
"You are right there is no illegality in growing tobacco whatsoever. ", but if you were then it is in fact 100% legal to grow your own tobacco plant. The only part that wouldn't be legal without paying duty would be turning the tobacco into a smokeable form. There is a form on the HM Revenue & Customs site that you can fill out for all of that stuff though which I'll look into at some point.

This for me is really just a little experiment, and something to keep myself occupied with over the summer (as well as other stuff obviously, I'm not just going to spend the whole summer sitting by my tobacco plant like some crazy ol' fool watching it grow).

Going to the garden centre today to buy pots and stuff, as well as some vegetables that the mother wants to grow.

No I wasn't being sarcastic, I was agreeing with you

Quite interesting about the growing conditions though. I guess you could germinate the seeds indoors (on the window sill) then as the become seedlings transplant them to outdoors.

"I'm not just going to spend the whole summer sitting by my tobacco plant like some crazy ol' fool watching it grow"

This really did make me laugh out loud

Will look forward to your future reports

jack_pot

Any updates yet ?

Forgot about this thread, thanks for bringing it up g_k.
I'll post up some pictures of my progress so far tomorrow.
They're doing nicely

Good stuff

Still waiting for the update jack_pot

Hope it went to plan, when is harvest time ? How do you intend to dry the leaves ?