How Do I Grow Grain On My Allotment

[mattphillips78]

Hi Everyone,

I am really interested in growing grains on my allotment and have just seen that you can buy a grain mill for your kitchen on this site!

I would really like to grow spelt and mill it myself to make homemade bread but i don't know where i can buy the seeds?Same with wheat etc.

Please help! Thank you very much in advance,

Matthew Phillips

[Andy Hamilton]

I too had this idea and left my rye grass to seed. The trouble was I noticed a bit of Ergot on it and it put me right off.

Kew gardens have experimented and they state that 1 square meter is enough space to grow wheat for one loaf of bread.

[Derry]

we've got grain growing in patches in our garden, and we've never sewn [sp?!] seeds, so we think its something from the bird food. its nowhere near enough to make bread, but it increases in amount every year.. so maybe in 10 years we'll have enough for a loaf

[cluckcluck]

It seems a bit labour intensive for an allotment to me. Is there another way of doing it that doesn't take up so much space?

[Flo]

Nope - that's why farmers have such big fields. You need space.

[p00rstudent]

i have been experimenting with this for a year now, I dug over an 8m x 10m section of my allotment, to plant up with wheat, i broadcast the grain in september last year, covered the whole thing with a net to stop the birds eating it all, and then pretty much left it till yesterday. When i started to harvested it, unfortuneatly ran out of time and still have about 1/4 of it left to harvest but it shouldnt take to much longer.

then it will be the slightly more difficult part the threshing, the plan here is to put the wheat inside an old pillow case and beat 7 shades of hell out of it, to knock the kernal loose.

i will then pour the pillow case on to a big sheet and on a windyish day and the help of a couple of friends bounce the sheet till the chaff has gone. at least thats the plan, it will be a week or so befor ei reach that stage.

I have it to one of least troublesome and effortless things i have grown yet, by sowing quite quikly they crowd out the weeds. The only tricky bit i found was getting hold of the orginal grains to sow last year. any way good luck.

[QB comes back]

Dear P00rstudent,

Would be interested to hear how your plan goes. Please keep us informed.

Thanks,

QB

[Rosendula]

The only tricky bit i found was getting hold of the orginal grains to sow last year. any way good luck.

So where did you find the original grains to sow? I found some last year, but paid a fortune for them off eBay. I did save some of my harvest to sow again this year, but I would like to sow a lot more than that and want to buy extra. I can find plenty of seeds on various other sites at much better prices, but no-one is getting back to me to answer my question about whether they are winter- or spring-wheat, so if I buy them I don't know whether to sow them in early Autumn, or early Spring. I haven't been able to find any sold as 'seeds for sowing', just for sprouting, cooking, etc.