For those of you who are using natural tobacco curing method, it is time of year now  (May-June of the year following the harvest) when the tobacco plants you hanged to cure last Fall - are finally ready!

It does take quite some time for mother nature to cure the tobacco leaves naturally, i.e. without any complicated methods of cleaning,  steaming, boiling, and drying - by just leaving tobacco plants hanging upside-down for several months in barn or unheated garage.

What you do now is: separate leaves from the plant stem, give them a vigorous shake - to shake off the last remaining dirt, dust etc. - and shred or grind  them with any tool you use for shredding. We use special tobacco shredder. It is perfect for shredding large amount of leaves at a time. You can find them on our website here.

Make sure leaves are dry but not crunchy, they must be bendable.  So that when you shred leaves you produce long thin stripes of tobacco as shown on the picture.

Otherwise - if leaves are too dry and crunch with loud snap when you bend it - the shredder will convert leaves into pile of dust, which is hardly usable.

So if your leaves are too dry, mist them with water and let them sit for some time to become bendable again before shredding.

I wish I can say "Happy smoking!", but I will not. I do not smoke myself, my husband does, and I am not happy about it :(  But what I know for sure the tobacco we grow in our garden is all organic and must be less harmful than that he buys from the store.