Flowering Tobacco : Essential Care Tips for Lush Blooms

Unlock the secrets to vibrant and lush Flowering Tobacco blooms with our essential care tips. Learn how to plant, water, prune, and maintain these fragrant beauties to enhance your garden’s appeal and ensure healthy growth.

As the sun starts to set each evening, a sultry floral fragrance perfumes the air, drawing you outdoors. There you’ll find clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms unfurling on tall stems, their iridescent petals glowing in the twilight. Welcome to the enchanting realm of flowering tobacco (Nicotiana)!

This alluring group of annuals and tender perennials brings visual drama and heavenly scents to gardens from spring through fall frost. Though they share a name with the smoking tobacco plant, these ornamental flowering plants are prized strictly for their ornamental beauty and divine fragrance.

If you crave lush, saturated colors and intoxicating night-blooming aromas in your landscape, flowering tobacco is a must-grow. With the right planting and care, these unique bloomers will thrive and fill your outdoor living spaces with their old-fashioned charm.

What are Flowering Tobacco Plants?

Here’s a short information chart about Flowering Tobacco:

Flowering tobacco plants belong to the Nicotiana genus and the nightshade (Solanaceae) family, making them relatives of petunias, morning glories, and edible crops like tomatoes and potatoes. There are roughly 65 species, both annuals and perennials.

Some of the most widely grown types include:

• Nicotiana alata: Compact winged flowering tobacco, an annual
• Nicotiana sylvestris: Tall, stately perennial flowering tobacco
• Nicotiana langsdorfii: Woodland flowering tobacco with dangling blooms

While their individual characteristics vary, most flowering tobaccos share some captivating traits – sweetly scented tubular flowers in radiant jewel tones that open up as evening approaches.

Hardy in zones 10-12, flowering tobaccos make fantastic annuals for decorative pots and garden beds in cooler regions. Their exotic, almost otherworldly floral displays pair beautifully with more traditional blooms like petunias, zinnias, and marigolds.

Planting Flowering Tobacco Plants

To get your flowering tobacco crop off to a robust, floriferous start, proper planting technique is crucial. Here are some tips:

• Start Early Indoors: Sow seeds 6-8 weeks before your area’s last spring frost date. Provide bright light once seedlings emerge.
• Direct Sow Outside: You can also direct sow seeds once the soil warms up in spring. Lightly cover the fine seeds.
• Transplant Properly: Space out seedlings 8-24 inches apart (depending on variety) in well-draining, nutrient-rich soil.
• Pick a Sunny Spot: Flowering tobacco needs at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day to thrive and bloom profusely.
• Pinch for Bushiness: Once plants are 6 inches tall, pinch out the growing tips to promote more branching and blooms.

For mature, transplanted flowering tobacco plants from nurseries, select compact specimens without any signs of pest or disease issues. Transitioning them properly will ensure they take off and thrive!

Flowering Tobacco Plant Care

Flowering tobacco plants have a naturally robust, vigorous growth habit that allows them to tolerate a range of conditions. But there are a few key care requirements for optimal blooming:

• Water Deeply: These plants need consistently moist, well-drained soil. Provide about 1 inch of water weekly, more during hot spells.
• Stake Tall Varieties: To prevent toppling, stake taller flowering tobacco varieties like Nicotiana sylvestris.
• Feed Regularly: Use a balanced liquid fertilizer every 2-3 weeks to replenish nutrients and fuel more blossoms.
• Practice Deadheading: Remove spent blooms to keep plants looking tidy and reroute energy back into new flower production.
• Provide Air Flow: Good air circulation helps prevent issues like powdery mildew and botrytis blight. Avoid overcrowding.
• Overwinter Perennials: In cold climates, cut tender perennial types back after frost and cover with insulating mulch for winter.

With straightforward care, you’ll have a breathtaking array of fragrant flowering tobacco blooms to enjoy each year!

Colorful Tobacco Flower Varieties

While early flowering tobacco plants sported plain green leaves and fairly basic red, pink or white blooms, modern hybrids now flaunt a spectacular spectrum of rich colors and unique flower shapes:

• Tall Flowering Tobacco: Towering Nicotiana sylvestris heights up to 5 feet with upright flower clusters in red, purple, white, lime.
• Dwarf Flowering Tobacco: Compact 12-18 inch plants like “Tinkerbell” and “Starmaker” in mixed bright hues.
• Fringed Flowering Tobacco: Whimsical petals with lace-like edges on varieties like “Fragrant Cloud” and “Persian Jewels.”
• Pendulous Types: Hanging, trailing blooms on plants like “Nutty Nicos” and woodland tobacco (N. langsdorfii).
• Bi-Color Blooms: Intriguing two-toned petals such as “Perfume Deep Purple” and “Lime Green.”

With such a wide range of heights, colors, and bloom styles to pick from, you can easily incorporate flowering tobacco into any sunny garden design!

Growing Flowering Tobacco in Containers

Don’t have a lot of garden space? No problem – flowering tobacco makes an outstanding annual for patio containers and window boxes! The compact winged tobacco (N. alata) varieties are especially well-suited for growing in pots.

Use a premium potting mix in a container with ample drainage holes. Pinch young plants back to promote bushiness. Water whenever the soil surface begins to dry, and feed with a water-soluble fertilizer every 2 weeks.

For continuous flowering, deadhead spent blooms promptly. As a bonus, potted flowering tobacco will perfume your deck or patio with its intoxicating evening fragrance!

Striking Flower Bed Companions

Though dazzling enough to be grown in monoculture displays, flowering tobacco complements many other annuals and perennials beautifully. For a cohesive look, choose bed partners with similar sun exposure and bloom time needs.

Some stunning flowering tobacco combinations include:

• Zinnias and Marigolds: Rich tones and strong scents mingle for high color impact.
• Petunias and Calibrachoas: Trailing petunias make the perfect carpet for upright flowering tobacco stems.
• Scabiosa and Cleomes: Airy, see-through combos with textural appeal.
• Cannas and Dahlias: Tropical-looking medleys with bold, saturated hues.
• Night-Blooming Companions: Flowering tobacco shares the evening spotlight with fragrant evening primroses and moonflowers.

Let your creative flair shine by blending flowering tobacco’s sumptuous flowers with annuals and perennials in any enticing color scheme your heart desires!

Attracting Pollinators with Flowering Tobacco

Not only are flowering tobacco plants invaluable for their lush blooms and evening fragrance, but they’re also a magnet for many pollinator species. Those enchanting tubular blossoms provide an abundant source of nectar for:

• Hummingbirds
• Swallowtail butterflies
• Moths
• Bees
• Other beneficial insects

Plus, their extended blooming season from late spring through frost provides sustenance for pollinators over a long period. Consider incorporating flowering tobacco plants into dedicated pollinator gardens for maximum beneficial insect support.

Where to Find Flowering Tobacco Seeds and Plants

Eager to grow flowering tobacco in your own garden? You can readily find seeds and plants from these sources:

Online Seed Companies:

Browse selections at mail-order seed sites for rare or unique flowering tobacco varieties.

Nurseries, Greenhouses

Check your local nurseries as the flowering season nears for flowering tobacco seedlings, seeds, or cuttings.

Home Depots, Garden Centers

These stores often have flowering tobacco seed packets, especially for popular cultivars like “Tobacco Mild Fruit.”

Mail Order Seed Companies

For obscure or hard-to-find flowering tobacco varieties, mail-order seed sites offer a wider array of unique flower selections in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Upscale, Luxury Stores

You can often find flowering tobacco for sale in the form of potted plants, seeds or “plantshare” activities where you can purchase a starter plant from a distributor or get a cutting from someone’s existing plant.

With limited “human” involvement, flowering tobacco flourishes. The plant’s needs are minimal — it is self-pollinating, has very deep taproots to absorr moisture, and responds well to pruning and staking, allowing the natural growth momentum to drive the development of the beautiful, showy blooms.

So feel free to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flowering tobacco experience! Just be prepared to be utterly captivated by every unique detail as the flower unfolds before you.