…with one major mistake by the gardener.
Pro-Tip for any gardener. Planting anything within a patch of sunflowers is not always the Three Sisters Garden dream it is supposed to be. My squash do fine, snaking through my sunflower patch healthy and with ease. The beans though? In 2021, I grew garbanzo beans within a patch of sunflowers. The beans started off strong, but were completely shaded out by the sunflowers before flowering. Other gardeners have had the same experience, yet I had to try and see for myself. A successful work around for an effective Three Sisters garden is planting all the elements at the correct time. The beans need to get to the flowering stage before the sunflowers get too tall and cut off their sunlight. For northern gardeners, the timeframe is truncated and may require more creativity of plant variety, some climate luck from Mother Nature and precise timing of planting. I did not successfully meet that challenge in 2021.
Experience told me that the next season, 2022, to watch the timing of planting the tobacco so that it isn’t shaded out by the sunflowers. Until mid-July, I thought I had it correct. I started the tobacco indoors in late March. Six healthy plants around 4″ tall were planted outside in mid-May. The sunflower seeds were started around the same time, direct seeded. The tobacco had a head start. However, as anyone who plants sunflowers knows, sunflowers get a slow start for a week or few, but then take off out of nowhere in mid-June, growing an inch a day or more. And the leaves of sunflowers are enormous and plentiful, blocking most who dare to grow.
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My YouTube channel shows the progress of my garden through garden tours, including tobacco, and I still have many tours to upload. Feel free to follow if you enjoy garden tours and seeing unique plants for more northern climates.
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I also feature some interesting weather content on this YT channel, a haboob and more.
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By August, the tobacco was looking healthy, but very short. I had applied some balanced fertilizer to the tobacco and it made no difference. Tobacco is supposed to be around 5-7′ tall, depending on variety. Mine were less than 2 feet tall. Even accounting for shorter northern plants, that is far too small. Tobacco, Nicotiana, has the prettiest flowers. Unfortunately, my tobacco plants did not mature to the point of sharing their lovely blooms with all of us. Next time, I will plant tobacco where they get full sunlight.
I did keep the leaves and I think they are drying somewhere in my garage. Not sure why, honestly. Nobody in our house smokes and my research tells me tobacco needs some specific processing before being smoked…by some mystery person. It’ll be a surprise the next time I clean the garage come spring. Maybe the untreated tobacco smoke will keep away bugs at a grill-out? Anyone know?
I’ve decided not to try tobacco again this coming garden season per I need space for growing extra dahlias. But I will keep the seeds I have to try again another season, or to give away.
I love giving seeds away and had a big giveaway last November. It was so much fun!
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Thank you for reading!