Kitchen Garden Tobacco Crop

We produced a bumper crop of tobacco leaves this summer, grown from seeds originally purchased at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

Obviously we told the kids they’d be really stupid to start smoking, but we were all curious to see what the plant looked like and whether we could produce anything worthwhile.’ The plants grew to about 5 foot tall, lots of leaf with not much flower, and a few bunches of leaves were then dried in one of the greenhouses.

A ceremonial smoke-in was held earlier this week. Alan Wadner and Paul Kriwaczek shredded a couple of leaves, loaded their pipes and sat back to enjoy a few puffs. ‘It’s a bit rough,’ commented Alan. 'Erm, no, I won’t be changing from my regular stuff.’

Please note, it’s not our usual healthy kind of crop. We do make sure we tell the kids that they’ll probably get some horrible cancer if they smoke.