Planting and Growing Tobacco in your Garden

When the frosts have finished it’s time to finally plant out those tobacco plants into the garden. If they are like mine they will be looking pretty crowded, tangled and a bit straggly so they will need separating and given some space.

You can grow them until maturity indoors or in a greenhouse in large pots at this point and if watered well they should thrive. But for me, they defiantly seem to get stronger stalks and good leaves if you can plant them outside in the fresh air.

As you can see from the video the box of tobacco plants has become very crowded so those that have survived are the strongest ones. These tobacco plants will have the best chance of growing well in the garden.

There were four tobacco plants put outside a few weeks ago but “unusually” the snails have made a meal out of them. So it’s time to put down some sort of slug repellent. I have to admit to using a small amount of salt round each plant here, but you can use a commercial snail or slug repellent.
If you keep chickens or birds or just don’t want to add another problem to the local wildlife you can get non toxic versions to keep the slugs at bay and that should keep everybody happy.

Digging over the soil before planting will make it easy for the new plants tender root system to take well and there is little need to add anything to the soil unless it’s really acidic. The tobacco plants should grow well in just garden soil and apart from the aforementioned snails this soil and a bit of water should be enough to make the tobacco plants grow strong.

To untangle the young plants from their seed trays, pull out the tobacco plants with your fingers. This makes it easier to separate them without breaking the roots. You can tell by using your fingers if the root system will break easily by their resistance to separate. If they won’t separate easily you need to remove them as a clump.

If you get two or three plants where the root system is too tangled together you can tamp the roots with the palm of your hand. This will remove the lose soil and separate them properly with the minimum amount of damage to the tobacco plants roots.

Dig a small hole for your plants and holding up the bottom leaves up cover the roots in enough soil to make the plant stand on its own. Then just gently push the plant into the soil.

You might want to put a stick near each plant this will be useful later on in the year as they may start to grow sideways if the weather or weight of the plant takes that direction. If you want them to grow straight you can tie them to the stick at a later date and this should correct their growth.

 If you have any yellow leaves on the base of your plant you can remove them at this point. They wont grow any more and it stops the slugs having a helpful ramp to get to the tastier green leaves above.

Unless you have a lot of space or want to grow a lot of tobacco you will find that you will have spares left over. You can discard them if you like but it might be worth keeping a few and planting them in small pots in case the slugs, snails or just bad weather destroy your current crop.

Growing tobacco plants in your garden