Florida Sun Grown tobacco is packed and inspected by the USDA and the Florida Department of Agriculture and ready for export to Nicaragua. Once the tobacco arrives at its final destination in Esteli, the tobacco will go through the slow fermentation process and several...
Inspecting samples from each priming from this year's crop of Florida Sun Grown Corojo tobacco. Each crop continues to get better and better as we fine tune our agri-science and cultural techniques for our unique climate and growing area....
At this stage, the tobacco is curing beautifully in the barn, slowly drying and turning green to brown. This is a slow process that takes around 60 days to complete. This is a critical process; too much humidity and the leaves will get moldy...
We sew each tobacco leaf onto a lathe and string using a specialized, 1950's vintage tobacco sewing machine. Back in the day, American farmers used to use these exact same machines up in Quincy & Havana Florida. Unfortunately, that was so long ago that...
There are a lot of definitions for word "sucker", but in this case we are talking about a tobacco sucker. In this pic you can see two small leaves or "suckers" growing from the main stalk of the plant. After a plant is topped,...
Florida Sun Grown Corojo tobacco at 6 1/2 weeks in the field. The tobacco is still in the rapid growth stage growing up to an inch overnight. If you look carefully you can see the bud emerging from the top of the plant. In...
Florida Sun Grown tobacco at 5 weeks after transplanting. At this stage the plants go into a rapid growth phase where plants can grow several inches overnight. During the heat of the day, under the intense Florida sun, the leaves start to wilt in...
Florida Sun Grown Cuban Corojo '99 tobacco at 1st cultivation, one week after transplanting in the field....
Each tobacco seedling is placed in the ground by hand by two people who ride on the back of the planter. For each seedling, the planter machine punches a precisely spaced hole in the plastic mulch that we use to cover each row. The...
Each tray of seedlings contains 240 plants. A few weeks prior to planting the seedlings are "mowed" to encourage deep roots, uniform growth and to strengthen the stem of each plant....