[Rosemary]

I know it's not a vegetable but I wondered if anyone had tried growing wheat and what success you had and how you did it. I was browing some old magazines and there was an article on growing wheat so i thought we might give it a go next year, so would welcome any tips.

[RUSTYME]

I have grown it a few times ... it is as easy as growing grass really ...coz that's what it is !!!! Check out what variety you want to grow , the best for your area , and you will likely find it is a winter sown one . So it will need to go in as soon as you can get on the land to work it . It should already be in really .
 I have got some Square Heads Master wheat , which is a variety from the 1860's. It is a thatching variety that grows to about 6' . It will give about 1-2 tons per acre of seed ,and about the same in straw.
It really is easy to grow , the hard work starts at harvest time .... You can expect about 1/2 - 1lb of seed per square yard if sown correctly and it grows without probs .
 3lb of seed sown should produce about 50-60lbs  at harvest .That would in turn, sow just under an acre the following year.
 Well worth growing now especially as the cost of wheat is starting to shoot through the roof .A week ago it went from 69p a kilo to £1.29 a kilo in tesco.
 If wheat doesn't do well where you are , you could try oats instead . They will grow mostly anywhere , and are once again , very easy to grow . Or if it does ok, why not try both ? You then get free food for your horse and some for porridge or whatever, as well as wheat for your bread etc. Just barley and rye to do now  !!!!


cheers

Russ

[RUSTYME]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homegrown-Whole-Grains-Harvest-Barley/dp/160342153X

the above book is  excellent for explaining everything you need to know, to grow your own grains . I wish I had this before I tried growing them ... it tells you the pitfalls to expect etc . It is an american book , but most , if not all , the info still applies .

cheers

Russ

[Rosemary]

Thanks, Russ. I was kinda counting on you 

[princesspiggy]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homegrown-Whole-Grains-Harvest-Barley/dp/160342153
. It is an american book

this made me chuckle, i once bought a pasture management book off amazon, was expensive too, then i had to wait 6 wks for it to be delivered. i didint realise it was american, all the pests and grasses were completely alien to me, was didnt think to check when i bought it. lol

what size area r u gona plant rosemary, id would be interested to see how u get on. we plant a small amount by hand every year to feed to the rabbits.

[Rosemary]

Planning just 9m x 1.2m  so 10.8 square metres - that's half of one of the five vegetable beds. The other half will be sunflowers. Then 4 beds for our normal rotation. I it works, we might do more next year. I think it's the harvest that's the hard part.

[princesspiggy]

i dont know anything about barley - i still dont understand the farmers weekly!! i just planted the seeds that i got for animal feed, and they grew. id like to find out when its ready to harvest tho, my kids watched nanny macphee, and the farmer-kid bit the barley and said it wasnt ready to harvest?? i dont know? i know in countyfile he tested his for moisture and his didnt need drying at all. can u feed it straight away or do u need to store it first like u do hay? but we just fed it to the rabbits while green, stalks and all, and they loved it. its oats id like to grow for the rabbits so il be reading this thread too!! surely to harvest just a small area ud just scythe it down and cut off ears by hand? 

[robert waddell]

what do you not understand
when did you plant the seeds
with barley first it is green then turns yellow the head falls over and the moisture content varies on the weather conditions
poultry you can feed whole to animals it has to be milled rolled or bruised otherwise they crap it out without getting the benifit and you encourage rats they eat the grains
if you are doing a small area you would have to store it the old fashioned way cut it bind it in sheaves stook it so it dries once dried bring it home then stack it then thrash it now you have the grain and straw this way you have the satisfaction

[RUSTYME]

yep as Lillian says just keep checking any grain once it has turned to seed , it is fairly easy to know when it is ready to cut. You just have to judge ripeness, with the weather for harvesting etc, but again as Lillian says don't cut off the heads/ears of whatever ... but thresh it off. If you cut the heads off , it can be the devils job to get the grain separate . A good effective thresher for smallish amounts is a push bike stood either on a stand or upside down on the saddle and handlebars . You then need one person to turn the pedals so that the back wheel spins, then as it turns just feed the top end of a handful of wheat, whatever, into the spinning wheel very gradually . The spokes will knock off the grains, which should then fall onto a cloth placed under the rear wheel of the bike. 
 I used this method to do about a ton of wheat and it worked fine. You could fit a small electric motor if you wanted , or even convert an old tumble dryer to do a similar job . Many ways to skin a cat , as they say . 
Oats are very easy to grow . Literally sow and they grow . For bunnies you could just cut them when they are ready, tie into bundles/sheaves , and then just hang the sheaves up to feed them to the bunnies  . The straw could then be just used as bedding , what they don't eat anyway .
Last April I sowed 6 oat seeds to see if they were viable . They were whole seeds that had escaped the crusher in some rolled oats I had for the horses. I popped them in a pot and they grew....job done, they were viable . So the pot went out side and got left . 3 got eaten by birds or slugs , but the remaining 3 grew well. They continued to grow  so I watered them to see how they did . I didn't expect them to go to seed , but they did . Each single seed produced a plant that in turn produced 3 - 4 tillers , these in turn produced a seed head with between 11 and 28 seeds . I will be sowing the small harvest from those 3 seeds this year to see how they do , just for a bit of fun .

cheers

Russ

[princesspiggy]

iv got a great little mill, from ascott, so can grind all seeds and even make flour if u wanted. its really good. its supposed to make chaff aswell but that always gets jammed quickly. really worth having tho. so to plant oats, cud u just plant whole oats as they are bought?

[RUSTYME]

you can use just plain unrolled oats to sow , but you may not know what variety it is . I didn't with mine .
 I took out a few, from a bag of rolled oats, that had missed the roller and were still intact.  They grew fine .
You can grow so many grains ... Amaranth is a good one , Quinoa, any of the millets grow well    . So it is easy to grow all of your bird seed if you have a budgie or canary , or even your wild bird seed too.
 But oats are really easy to grow .... just sow and more or less forget till harvest . If you were sowing a crop to sell or to live on , you would need to be more diligent , but just a small amount can be left to it's own devises if you prepare the seed bed well and have it clear of weeds.


Cheers

Russ

[princesspiggy]

well im insired now, what month, and how deep? etc 

[RUSTYME]

you can sow oats in the autumn and they will be ready to harvest the beginning of late summer (if that makes sense ? ), or you can sow them in spring for early autumn harvest . I sowed the few I tested for viability in very late April and they were ready in September.
I have grown small amounts before ,up to about 1/4 of an acre ,and I sowed those in March , they were ready about August time if memory serves me right ?
It all depends on the weather really . I would think that mid March onwards would be fine though .
 For a veggie plot sized area , just prepare a seed bed and broadcast the seed as evenly as possible , and then rake in . If you have hungry wild birds about , you may lose most of it to them , unless you cover with some netting till it is a couple of inches long .
If you are only doing a couple of square yards , then you can sow in drills about an inch deep , but I still prefer to broadcast myself .
 The ones I grew in a pot (sowed 6 lost 3 to birds/slugs ) tillered to about 3-4 per plant and grew to between 36"-48" tall , and that was using very cheap seed compost . The times I have grown it in the past I never used any manure or fertiliser and it grew the same as the pot grown ones.

cheers

Russ

[robert waddell]

oats by nature is slow maturing  you now get winter oats and spring oats (when you sow them) they used to need frost to finish rippening still green when cut with the binder

[Bright Raven]

Princesspiggy
iv got a great little mill, from ascott, so can grind all seeds and even make flour if u wanted. its really good.

Question for all you good folks... What mill do you have and would you recommend it?
I am thinking about milling flour.