June 2, 2015 - 4:36pm
Grow your own grain?!?
Hi,
Does anyone grow wheat or rye for milling (or otherwise eating)? Does it make a substantial difference to the taste of your bread? Are there any differences to consider if growing grain for cracking and/or sprouting rather than milling?
I'd be fascinated to know whether it's possible and practical to grow a small amount 5-10 sq metres of grain on an allotment/vegetable garden for fun.
Jenny
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There's a book by Thom Leonard in which he describes how start your own backyard grain patch - how and what to plant, how to care, reap, sheaf, dry, thresh, and winnow - all the fun stuff.
It is an interesting question. I hope you post on what you find.
I considered planting the backyard with grain, as to spite being in one of the largest wheat producing regions on the planet, I can have a hard time finding grain.
If you're going to try growing rye please educate yourself on ergot, what it looks like, what it's effects are, etc. As it can infect rye and to a lesser extent wheat. I'm not trying to talk you out of trying to grow your own. It typically is rare, but it only takes the one year with the exact bad conditions to cause problems.
Having said that I've only ever seen one piece of ergot in the total volume of grain I've cleaned.
last year but forgot it has to be threshed before milling.....and doing that by hand was such a chore..... i'm not doing that again:-) Hopefully Whole Foods will continue to carry all the grains in their bins