Florida Sun Grown

Planting the Spring 2023 FSG Tobacco Crop with Bobby Newman

It’s been a long week but we got our Spring 2023 FSG tobacco crop in the ground. We planted 30,000 seedlings by hand and in 60 days these tiny plants will be 5 feet high, ready for topping and picking the first primings of the bottom leaves.

It was a pleasure having my friend Bobby Newman from the J.C. Newman Cigar Company spend a day at the farm. Bobby and his brother Eric own America’s oldest family owned cigar company that dates back to 1895. Their historic Ybor City cigar factory hand rolls The American cigar which uses authentic Florida Sun Grown wrappers grown right here on our farm.

Bobby said it was always on his bucket list to plant cigar tobacco and after 72 years he finally got chance. I must say I was totally impressed. I figured he would work for an hour, get dirty, take some pics and head home, but Bobby literally planted for 8 hours straight. He didn’t even bring a lunch so we had to split my fruit cup from Chick-fil-a like we were two hobos under a shade tree. It was a pretty cool experience I must admit and it was nice to burn a FSG 20 Acre Farm and American cigar after a long day of work.

This marks the 10th year since we planted our first test crop back in 2013. Time sure flies. Keep smoking those FSG’s and we will keep this little bit of cigar tobacco farming alive in Florida. 🚜🇺🇸