Control Pollination: (Picture of the flowers on the tobacco plant) This process involves taking the female flower, which we emasculate to prevent self-pollination, and we manually brush the pollen from the male flower onto the female flower. This process results in the development of the new Cuban – Cameroon seed pod.

Seed Pod Development: (Picture of the seeds in the hand) The flower, that has now been pollinated, develops seed capsules over the next month and we now have over a thousand hybrid seeds. We allow these seeds to mature, then we harvest, dry and label these seeds as our Cuban – Cameroon seed hybrids.

We then germinate the Cuban – Cameroon hybrid seeds while placing the plants in our greenhouse before we plant them onto our farm.

This is a controlled environment that ensures the health of each plant by regulating the proper climate and UV rays while keeping insects, airborne viruses and molds from harming these plants.

Once we plant our healthy Cuban – Cameroon hybrid tobacco plants, it takes between 100 – 120 days to mature.

We grow this tobacco under shade to reduce the UV rays by 30 – 40% to create more elastic tobacco with the perfect texture for wrapper tobacco.

We harvest the leaves through priming, from the bottom of the plant to the top, which takes over several weeks, and we now have what is now famously known as our Nicaraguan Shade grown tobacco.