Hedgerow tobacco substitute

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JamPan

Forager
Jun 8, 2017
245
1
Yorkshire
I'm not quite sure where to put this so it's gone in here. :)

Not that I really smoke but wanted to give this a go as I like to tinker.

So yesterday I collected a carrier bag half full of raspberry leaves and the same again with bramble leaves.

I've had them in the dehydrator and this evening rubbed them down and mixed 2:1 raspberry to bramble. Then sprayed with with a few mists of water and mixed it up. It's quite a bit fluffier than you'd expect.

We'll I can say it's a success as a base pipeweed.
In a rolly it smokes fine and holds together. Though there is no tar hit or flavour like proper tobacco.
I reckon it could be mixed up well with lavender and mint etc... Or if it was slightly cold smoked over a hardwood fire and some molasses added, it might not be far off.

Anyway, I've now got plenty of dried bramble and raspberry leaves for tea or whatever.
 

Nice65

Brilliant!
Apr 16, 2009
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W.Sussex
If you like to have a smoke, I'd tend toward a pipe, or just accept that you're actually craving nicotine and have a cigarette. Combusting leaves and taking the carcinogenic smoke into the lungs isn't good.

Some good quality vape juice might be worth adding, but all smoke will produce tar, and that's the bad stuff.

Having said all that, I've smoked old nettle stems, Old Mans Beard stems, tea etc. But that was as kids, before I discovered my dad stashed Castello cigars in his car. :lmao:
 

JamPan

Forager
Jun 8, 2017
245
1
Yorkshire
It all actually started as an offshoot of a post when Janne said his dad used to smoke bramble leaves in WW2 when tobacco was scarce.

So me being me had to work out how to make some. :)
Anyway, I suppose it could help someone get off nicotine whilst still having the smoking action.
 

Corso

Full Member
Aug 13, 2007
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Such as?

Maybe it's because I'm not a smoker, but I fail to understand what's so bad about substituting hedgerow leaves for tobacco…

because you have no idea what the by-products might be.

I'd rather listen to my MP than anything that came from Janne's twisted logic
 

JamPan

Forager
Jun 8, 2017
245
1
Yorkshire
Janne never said it was a good thing by the way. Just a comment regarding various uses for brambles.

I also agree smoking isn't any good for you, but at least I know how to make it for no real reason beyond curiosity. :)
 

Nice65

Brilliant!
Apr 16, 2009
6,438
2,859
W.Sussex
Janne never said it was a good thing by the way. Just a comment regarding various uses for brambles.

I also agree smoking isn't any good for you, but at least I know how to make it for no real reason beyond curiosity. :)

I think that's the jist of the thread, just trying out an idea.
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
38,937
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S. Lanarkshire
My Grandpa smoked a pipe. One of those deep bowled ones with the silver covers on it. He stuffed every damned kind of herbage in the planet in it, "Jist tae see how it smoked".
There were times that going for a walk with Grandpa was like following a smouldering compost heap :rolleyes:
He was incredibly mellow one Summer though; a bit odd because though he was a really clever man he could be a thrawn old blighter. Anyway, my youngest Uncle came home from University, and watched his faither wandering around the garden and then said to my Granny, "Why are we growing cannabis, Mother ?", "Are we, son", replied my rather bemused Grandmother.
In those days the hemp seed for the budgie wasn't irradiated, the budgie's cage was cleaned out regularly, and the compost heap had sprouted it. In his usual fashion the Grandpa had stuffed some of the greenery in his pipe, just to see how it smoked :D :lmao:
If I mind correctly he liked mugwort and coltsfoot, and before anyone decries the old blighter, he lived until his late nineties, with all his marbles intact.

M
 
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Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
38,937
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S. Lanarkshire
We know so much more about the effects of smoking, but there's a bias there, it's smoking commercial tobaccos which are hugely additive ridden. The biggest consumers of essential oils on the planet are the tobacco manufacturers.
While essential oils are both good and useful they can be incredibly potent and really not something to be taken in in any strength.

The original tobacco leaves are a very different product entirely.

Having said all that, there's absolutely no dubiety about it; the lungs of the smoker are horrendous, just as are the autopsy results of the people who lived indoors in Winter with either animal fat or fossil fuels as their heat and cooking mediums.

I sometimes wonder how different bush crafters ones are :dunno:

M
 

Corso

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Aug 13, 2007
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Their last few months are bloody horrid too, you don't just wake one morning and pop your cloggs, you suffer some horrible symptoms
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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S. Lanarkshire
Yes. Horrendous for the patient and absolutely soul destroying for the family to watch.

My Mother died of lung cancer when I was fourteen. It took her four months to die. Mum had started smoking during the war; it was encouraged, it was a social thing, a relaxing thing, "take a breather, have a cuppa, have a smoke break", kind of ethos.

Smoke was not always considered a bad thing; it does kill insects, it does preserve both food, thatch and materials, and it used to be used as a way to administer medicinal herbs.

Now ? we know a lot better, are very much more aware of the damage that smoke does to the body.
I really don't think I could have handled it at all well if either of my children had taken up the habit. It's over forty years now since my Mum died, and I'm sitting here typing this and I still get upset at it.

It's on the tip of my tongue to do a Nancy Reagan, but you're all adults, you're not stupid, you have free will and life's short but we do like to keep it interesting. We've all got to go sometime, but going out that way is miserable for everyone.

Strangely I still like the smell of old fashioned pipe tobacco. I'm told that if it's made unadulterated, like good tea, simply from good leaves, then though addictive, it's nowhere near as toxic as the heavily processed stuff. :dunno:
On balance it's still a bad idea though.

M
 

JamPan

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Jun 8, 2017
245
1
Yorkshire
Toddy, your grandpa sounds like a brilliant character!

I've been looking for motherwort, though haven't found any, but dismissed mugwort which there's loads of. I've just checked it out and it sounds interesting. I think I'll dehydrate a bunch of that for some tea and enhance my dreams. :)

Janne, I don't think they'll be far off legalising cannabis here. It's readily available, but the unfortunate thing most people don't realise is it's grown in prepared houses run by trafficked Vietnamese people who were promised jobs here. Legalise it and it'll hopefully help lessen that portion of trafficking. Not that I buy it myself as it's about as adulterated as cigarettes are. :)
 

JamPan

Forager
Jun 8, 2017
245
1
Yorkshire
I sometimes wonder how different bush crafters ones are.

M

That is a very good point and something I think about everytime I light a fire. How many cigarette equivalents am I breathing in from this one fire. i bet it's more than most people realise.
 

didicoy

Full Member
Mar 7, 2013
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Toddy, your grandpa sounds like a brilliant character!

I
Janne, I don't think they'll be far off legalising cannabis here. It's readily available, but the unfortunate thing most people don't realise is it's grown in prepared houses run by trafficked Vietnamese people who were promised jobs here. Legalise it and it'll hopefully help lessen that portion of trafficking. Not that I buy it myself as it's about as adulterated as cigarettes are. :)
I've been around dope smokers all my life and growers for over 30 years. I don't smoke, but although there are gangs who use labourers from overseas, to watch over these large commercial cannabis grows here in the UK. The majority of street (home grown) is just that. Grown by smokers, and increasingly by enterprising young dudes, in spare bedrooms, rented houses. To some of these British citizens who grow 3 crops a year, year in year out. 'They fear it ever becoming decriminalised' or legal. Their livelihood would go up in smoke within a 12 week period. A tiny amount of the cannabis produced in the UK is grown by Vietnamese, who have been brought over on false pretences of other employment. For years now it's been gang culture from Asia who have pioneered wholesale drug production and supply of in the UK, using this type of worker.
 

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