How do you grow tobacco?

Answer 1

Tobacco is a very difficult, tempermental, and labor-intensive crop to grow. The seeds are tiny, almost microscopic. These must be germinated in seed beds, with some covering over it to allow water to enter, but not allow a heavy rain to pound the seedlings, which will kill them. Once several inches high, the seedlings can be transplanted, one at a time, to the field. After the plants are several feet tall they must be "suckered", by hand. The top of each plant is pinched off, to make them bushy, instead of tall and spindly. When ready to harvest, the entire plant is pulled up. The planst are taken to tobacco barns, or curing sheds. The plants are pierced at the bottom of the stalk and slid onto sticks, and hung unspide down in the shed, with several plants hung from each stick. They hang for weeks, until partially dried out and nice and brown. Sometimes fires were kept burning inside the barn or shed to facilitate the drying. Then the leaves are stripped off the stalks, and packed in bales today. In olden times the leaves were packed in gigantic barrels, called hogsheads, thet weighed one thousand pounds or more when full.