I am not a smoker, and I am not advocating that anyone smoke. However, I have a number of friends who do smoke. And the problem is that cigarettes have gotten incredibly expensive in recent years.

I also live in North Carolina, which is a big tobacco growing state. Up until about 7 years ago I lived on a farm, and many of my neighbors were growing and curing acres of tobacco.

The basic question that anyone who watches the process would have is, “How can it be that tobacco grows like a weed, but cigarettes cost $4 a pack?”

So this article came along in the local paper, and it really clicks:

Fed-up smokers decide to grow their own tobacco

Here’s the money statement in that article:

Cigarettes cost an average of $4.35 a pack, home growers can make that amount for about 30 cents.

The steps to growing your own tobacco and making your own cigarettes:

1) Buy a pack of tobacco seeds

2) Start the seed indoors in the early spring

3) Transplant into your garden, keeping in mind that a) tobacco plants prefer loose, airy/sandy soil and b) tobacco plants are huge when they are full grown. Like about 5 feet tall with a wingspan of several feet. One plant is going to provide a lot of tobacco. You can see how big a tobacco plant gets in this video:

4) Let the plant grow. You will have to keep the tobacco worms off it, you will have to water and fertilize it and you will have to top it when it blooms, but otherwise these plants do grow like weeds.

5) Cure and age the tobacco

6) Make your cigarettes either by hand or with a machine like this:

If you don’t want to mess with growing and curing, you can buy loose tobacco and roll your own at still-substantial savings. Get in Google and poke around – It is possible that you are spending more than a thousand dollars a year on cigarettes, and it is possible to cut that number down to $200 or $300.

Obviously you could save even more money if you were to quit smoking, so see: How to quit smoking

Or, try eCigarettes. See: How Electronic Cigarettes Work

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