The tobacco seeds were sourced from a local community member.
Nothing in the farm’s environmental parameters (pH, temperature, E/C, etc.) was changed.
“We used the same nutrients and light schedule as we would for our greens,” Van Lagen shares.
For lettuces, typically they spend two weeks in the seedling area and four weeks in the main growing area. For tobacco, it was in the seedling area for a little longer – three weeks – before being transplanted to the main growing area where it grew for seven weeks.
It’s important to note the longer growing times here. Yes, you can grow lots of crops using hydroponics, but it’s always a balance between “yes we can do it” and “is it worth it?” Would you grow a watermelon in your farm if it took four months to grow?
Thankfully, in tobacco, the students did not experience any new diseases or pests for the new crop.
However, when it came to harvesting the tobacco was challenging because the stems were thick and difficult to remove. After the full 10 weeks, all dozen tobacco plants were harvested, and the leaves were dried.
Growing tobacco is different because tobacco leaves are very large, and the stem gets thick which makes it difficult to remove. Van Lagen says if they were to grow tobacco again, the tobacco would need more room to accommodate the larger leaves.
When testing other crops, it’s also crucial to wonder – how will this impact their neighbours? Plants respond to other plants, so there’s always an element of caution when introducing new plants to the mix. You can see that when Durham College tried to grow tomatoes and jalapeno peppers, they had to pick one crop over the other. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case with tobacco.
“Tobacco was grown on the top runway in our main farm along with our leafy greens, and there was no noticeable difference with the greens grown alongside the tobacco,” Van Lagen says.
