I'm not a smoker, but I've seen tobacco plants in front yards around here, and yesterday I saw one which had gone to seed. The plant was conveniently located right on the street, so I collected some of the copious and very tiny seeds. There were many pods open to the top, and when you tip them, tiny seeds spill out. They are much smaller than poppy seeds.
My hands were sticky after touching the plant, and smelled good, kind of floral. I didn't notice any nicotine effect from that, though I've read it can happen. Today I learned a bit about planting them. I don't have any potting soil, but maybe they will do OK in the shit soil we have around here. Tobacco is said to be a very tough plant which can handle different soils.
I sprinkled seeds in each compartment, watered them a bit, and put some water in the container below as recommended. I then lightly covered that with a plastic bag, leaving some room for air because I read that mold can kill them otherwise.
They should germinate in 7 to 10 days. I plan to keep this thread updated with progress.
It's been almost two weeks since planting, and now I have four sprouts. This is the largest of them:
Since they all look like the same plant, I'm pretty sure they are all tobacco. They seem incredibly tiny and fragile, so I'm not going to put them in direct sun yet. They look like they could get dried out in a few minutes with the sun around here.
Ah, I may have the ornamental species Nicotiana sylvestris instead of Nicotiana tabacum, going by flower appearance of the plant where I got the seeds.
Potatoes are nightshades. It's a huge class of plants.
Indeed and a lot of them are poisonous, including potatoes if you eat them at the wrong time. Never eat a green potato:
POTATO TOXICITY... Potatoes contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine.
Solanine is also found in other plants in the family Solanaceae, which includes such plants as the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and tobacco (Nicotiana) as well as the potato, eggplant, and tomato.
This toxin affects the nervous system, causing weakness and confusion.
These compounds are generally concentrated in its leaves, stems, sprouts, and fruits.
Exposure to light, physical damage, and age increase glycoalkaloid content within the tuber; the highest concentrations occur just underneath the skin.
Cooking partly destroys them. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes suffices to produce toxic effects in humans.
Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps, and in severe cases coma and death; however, poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely.
The U.S. National Toxicology Program suggests that the average American consumes at most 12.5 mg/day of solanine from potatoes (the toxic dose is several times this, depending on body weight).
When the new world was discovered they called the tomato, "The Wolf Peach". Doctors described all manner of awful things that would happen to you if you ate a tomato. I can't find it right now but one doc said it would invert all of your internal organs basically then they'd leak out you end. Some really crazy stuff.
All the nightshades have all kinds of Alkaloid chemicals. Tobacco, Tomatoes, Eggplants, Peppers... all the same family of Nightshades or Solanaceae in Latin.
Never spray tobacco juice on tomato plants. While great to keep harmful bugs and fungus down on other plants, it can spread tomato rot.
Now it's been more than 5 weeks, and I have lots of little seedlings, and a few large ones.
This is confusing, same situation in the other container. I suppose the large seedlings could be a completely different plant that happened to be in the dirt I used.
None of them are growing very quickly. I put them out in a place they get the morning sun for energy without getting scorched in the middle of the day.
My hands were sticky after touching the plant, and smelled good, kind of floral. I didn't notice any nicotine effect from that, though I've read it can happen. Today I learned a bit about planting them. I don't have any potting soil, but maybe they will do OK in the shit soil we have around here. Tobacco is said to be a very tough plant which can handle different soils.
I sprinkled seeds in each compartment, watered them a bit, and put some water in the container below as recommended. I then lightly covered that with a plastic bag, leaving some room for air because I read that mold can kill them otherwise.
They should germinate in 7 to 10 days. I plan to keep this thread updated with progress.