Tobacco Frustrations

Since we rednecks make our own whiskey and our own smoke, too, I'm trying to grow and process tobacco again. Last time, I was able to grow, harvest and dry the stuff, but it molded and was ruined during the fermentation process. My fertile, if unstable, brain has concocted a new way to ferment it, so we're giving it another go.

The tobacco, however, is going full rebel and refusing to cooperate. Dig the seed cups shown below.

Argh.

If you click on the image and look at the full-sized version, you can see some cells are filled with tiny tobacco plants while others are completely empty. They're all in the same tray so they've been in exactly the same environment. Why did some cells generate a zillion tobacco seedlings and others produce none? It's a Yankee plot, I tell you what!

My fermentation chamber sensor is still under development. I like the SensorPush hygrometer, but it communicates via Bluetooth, so it's a pain to use unless you want to write software to do authentication over Bluetooth, which I do not. I sprung for the SensorPush Gateway which connects to the sensors, grabs their data and then uploads it to the SensorPush website, where I can harvest it with a simple Python script. Or it would be simple if I knew Python.

I'm learning. I should be up and running with harvesting the sensor data in a week. Unless the tobacco plants go full triffid on me and mature by then, I'll be fine.

The plan is to pick a spot in North Carolina, harvest its hourly temperature and humidity data off the Interweb Tubes and then use a Raspberry Pi, the sensor and a simple heater and humidifier to mimic the climate in North Carolina in an enclosure in my garage. Simplicity itself!

More updates as events warrant. In the meantime, I need to go outside and shake my fist at those empty seed cups. "You aren't even trying! Why can't you be more like the seed cup with all the seedlings! Your mother and I are so disappointed in you!"