In short: It's demanding. And it's labor intensive. For about 8 months straight.
There is much more detail about tobacco growing is on the "How to Grow Tobacco" site, but basically that's a bunch of amateurs like me there feeling their way along.
Here's a synopsis of my experience:
Buy seed in Feb. Many, many types available. Seed is cheap. Stick with a couple of known cigar tobacco varieties, picking wrapper, binder, and filler types. Starting the seeds is an art in itself--I could write pages on that alone. It's not hard, just you have to do certain things a certain way, or the seeds will not sprout or they'll die.
Once they've succesfully sprouted, pick out the healthiest looking sprouts & put in cups. When these are large enough, transplant to garden or container. Soil and fertilizer--very important. I believe most cigar tobacco taste comes from the soil & fertilizers used. You ever notice how an unlit premium cigar sometimes almost smells real earthy, organic, almost like MANURE? What do you think most Third World countries are using for fertilizer to replenish nutrients in cigar tobacco growing soil they grow tobacco in year after year? Just a hunch here. This year I will be using some nice ripe manure in some of the pots as an experiment. Also, I have concluded from much research as well as experience that nice rich black soil and/or lots of expensive commercial fertilizer which produces huge tobacco plants does not equate to good tasting cigar tobacco.
Once it's in the pots or garden, tobacco plants are hardy and grow fast. They like lots of water & need full all day sun. But the Tobacco Hornworm (the caterpillars of the huge nocturnal Sphinx moth) and the Tobacco Budworm are your mortal enemies. A Hornworm, if left alone for a few days as it grows from tiny to a big fat caterpillar, can eat an entire leaf in about a day. And budworms get into the top of the plant and eat emerging leaves when they're tiny, so if they eat a little, you've lost a lot. So--you gotta SPRAY. Sevin (carbaryl) is great for stopping hornworms in their tracks and a little shot of permethrin based spray in the tops will keep budworms controlled. No other way around this in my opinion.
Picking (or priming): When the plant is fairly large, the lowermost leaves will take on a lighter green and even start to yellow in areas. It's time to pick these. You end up with a big stack of ripe leaves that need to hang to color cure, that is, go from green to yellow and then brown. I string mine on a wire & hang in my patio. It must be in an area out of sun and rain. Color curing takes about 40 days; however, the final week or so is probably the most dangerous time because of mold. If it's been raining or if the humidity is above say 85% for any length of time, and the leaf has a lot of brown on it but not quite fully brown, mold will start to grow on the brown areas and that's the end of it. If too humid I temporarily move mine to the garage. However, too long in an insufficiently humid area will make the leaf dry green, and it's ruined, cannot be saved.
Assuming you have leaf that's made it to color curing, i.e. it's all brown, then it must be fermented. (Actually it's not true fermentation but more an enzymatic oxidation process.) Large cigar producers simply stack up huge piles ("pilones") of hands (10 or so leaves bound together at the stem) of color cured tobacco which creates heat, and is carefully monitored, and which reaches around 120F in the centers of the pilones. Me, I put my leaf in a homemade curing chamber which acts basically as a little oven at a steady 120 degrees. While fermentation in huge pilones takes 30 or more days, that's because only the center is at 120 and the outides are much cooler, and the pilones must be broken down & restacked several times to get any given leaf a good baking at 120F for something like 5 to 8 days. It should be mentioned that leaf from higher on the plant is stronger and requires longer "baking." Insufficiently fermented leaf will taste harsh, awful, and is absolutely unacceptable to smoke.
While in the fermentation stage, the leaf must be kept moist & supple enough so as not to crack when handled, yet not wet enough to get mold or rot--which can happen fast, like in one day. This is another critical, dangerous time for leaf.
Once the fermentation process is complete, then aging is the next step. As in, you bag it up and let is sit for, oh, a year or two or five.
THEN, one day, MAYBE, you will end up with some decent leaf.
I'm still very much in the experimentation stage. But I can tell you that I've come a LONG way from when I started. The first year I did this I lost lots of plants and leaf at every stage for every reason imaginable. Last year was MUCH better. This year I feel like will be determinative as to whether I can really end up with truly good quality cigar tobacco. (Ha. We all know I will be experimenting for the next 10 seasons at least.)
Oh and I have molds, a cutter, a couple of chavetas, and a cutting board. I've rolled a few from my leaf and the cigars looked good but in smoking were just passable. Nothing like a premium store bought cigar. But, inspiring nonetheless.
Now here's a funny part--I always plant extra plants and end up with more plants-in-cups than I can handle. So I started selling these extras on Craigslist. At this early stage the time investment is minimal, and seed, dirt and styrofoam cups are cheap. So even at $3 a cup, it's a huge profit margin. With the money I make from that, I go buy cigars! THAT is perhaps truly successful cigar tobacco farming, LOL!
