Raising Tobacco in a temperate climate

[thecroweater]

Hi wonder if I could get some advise here. The seed I have is Virginia and I live in a pretty cool place with heavy clay soils. Back home in SA it was a place of cold nights and warmish days in winter and bloody hot in summer and the soil was light red sand. most things including tobacco grew well if ya kept the water up to them. I'm having real trouble with this tobacco here and the last 3 seasons have been very hit and miss (with more misses than hits) How is the best way for me to go about rearing them in a climate like this, wait till mid spring? germinate indoors ?. I did try germinating then inside in a tropical type environment (sealed with plastic) and got near as 100% germination but the shock of removing the cover and exposing the plant to the atmosphere killed better than 80% of them. What bugs me is this use to be a commercial tobacco growing area and ya can drive past old wooden kiln shacks in the towns around this place so they must be able to do well