Tumbledown Farm .9 Acres (give or take an acre or two)

Introduction

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.  They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst.  By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches.  He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.  He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;  And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.
Psalm 104:10-15 (KJV)

Even children can learn to grow their own bread...

...and grind the flour and bake their own cake!


As Wilson and Warburton (Field Crops) wrote a century ago, wheat cultivation is as old as civilization.  Because of that ancient history, it is hard to know with any certainty the origins of wheat farming.  Wheat has been grown and bread made from wheat since before there were written records of any sort, whether from Mesopotamia or Egypt.  And wheat is already mentioned in the first book of the Bible (Genesis 30:14; and the second, Exodus 9:32; etc.).

The greatest surprise for many folks is that wheat can also be grown easily, and in sufficient quantities for a family, in a relatively small garden.  According to Rodale, the typical family uses about a bushel of wheat (60 lb.) a year (+ .5 bushel of oats, rye, corn, etc.).  In a good year on good ground, you can get a bushel of wheat from 1,000 square feet of garden (10' X 50').

From Winter Wheat ...

In fact, wheat has an important place in a well-established garden rotation.  Even some agribusiness types and big farmers know the value of wheat in rotation.  The Ohio State Extension service reports that including wheat in the standard soybean and corn rotation actually increases the yield of the other two crops by an average of 5%, improving the soil and breaking disease cycles.  The first time I gave serious thought to the need for a rotation in my own garden was when I stumbled across Gene Logsdon's classic Small-Scale Grain Raising, with its recommendation of a five-year rotation: "wheat, clover, sweet corn, peas, and beans double-cropped to fall vegetables, tomatoes, then back to wheat."  Logsdon's recommendation forms the basis (roughly) of my own current garden rotation, though I have simplified his five-year into a four-year rotation (minus the sweet corn, for which I have another source and not enough ground) to fit my own place and family needs.  (Scroll down for the full rotation below.)  I leave in the wheat because it improves the rotation and because I like to make whole-wheat bread and cookies, and because the rabbits love it.  (Chickens do too!  ...as The Little Red Hen would attest.)  For the animals, you needn't thresh, winnow, grind and bake.  Just feed it whole!

So, how do you raise wheat in the garden?  Here's how I do it.  First step, figure out what wheat to sow.

Triticum spp.

From Winter Wheat ...

T. aestivum L. Poaceae (Gramineae)

Common wheat, or bread wheat, is now also being considered as a potential fuel crop!  If world-wide fuel demand continues to outstrip supply, we may all be growing our own garden variety bread some day soon, so we had better begin to pay attention to the way it is grown, harvested and eaten.  Wheat is an annual grass (a fall-sown winter annual for us), but as indicated above, its origins are lost in history.  We only know it in its cultivated form; all of its native, wild ancestors are lost to us.   (Other "kin" in the ordinary bread wheat family are:  Durum wheat,  T. durum  Desf.  Spelt, T. spelta L.  Emmer, T. dicocconSchrank. etc.)  For a full rundown of the various Triticum species, see the Purdue wheat page.

Five Types of Wheat (of commercial importance in the U.S.):

Hard Red Winter Wheat

Hard red winter wheat is grown mainly in the West and used mainly for commercial bread production.

Hard Red Spring Wheat

(Same as for Hard Red Winter wheat.)

Soft Red Winter Wheat

Soft Red Winter Wheat is grown mainly in the East and used mainly for pastries.

White 

Grown mainly in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast; used for bread.  (Note: is now also being increasingly grown in the Midwest.)

Durum

Grown in Dakotas for pasta.

What is the difference between "winter wheat" and "spring wheat"?  

Spring wheat is planted in the spring for a late summer harvest where winters are too severe to allow wheat to "winter over."  Winter wheat is planted in the fall and goes more or less dormant during winter.

From Winter Wheat ...

Where should I buy wheat seed?

I buy it from the local "Feed and Seed" (Farmer's Co-op).  Wheat is also available for mail order from Johnny's and other garden catalogs.  

What wheat varieties should I Buy?

Buy whatever the farmers in your area are planting.  In Indiana, you can pretty well follow the results of the OSU Extension wheat variety field trials as a guide.  I usually ask the owner of the "Feed & Seed" to give me a few pounds of whatever is most popular with the farmers.  He has to break into a bag and weigh it out especially for me, but so far he's willing to sell it in the small amounts I need.

Planting Wheat:

When to Plant Wheat

Winter wheat should be planted within the two-week period following the Hessian fly-free date, which ranges from September 22 across the northern tier of counties in Indiana to October 9 in the extreme southern part of the state.  (Late September-early October in Indianapolis.)  Rodale recommends the following rule of thumb: plant spring wheat at about the time of the last killing frost; plant winter wheat about the time of the first killing frost.

Seeding Rate: How Much Wheat to Plant

The Ohio State University Extension recommends the following:  18 to 24 seeds per foot of row for both a 7.5 and 15 inch row spacing.  Since gardeners will not be using tractors (normally), or a grain drill, or even alway hand-push row seeders, it is probably better to plant by broadcasting the seed.  Broadcast seeding rate is about 4 lb. of seed per 1,000 square feet.  (20'X50')  Logsdon recommends a bushel per acre for a grain drill, more (5-6 pecks) for broadcasting.

Planting Depth for Wheat

If using a planter or grain drill, then set it for 1 to 1.5 inches deep, as per the OSU instructions.  (Logsdon recommends planting at 2-3 inches.)  However, if broadcasting, then work up a fine seed bed (like you would for planting a lawn), then broadcast the seed on top of the soil.  When using a hand-crank broadcaster, try to crank at the same rate continuously, while walking at a steady pace.  Coverage of one seed per square inch is about right.  Rake or harrow the whole plot lightly to cover most of the seed.  I usually water immediately if there is not the threat of rain so that germination begins promptly, and try to keep the ground moist until the crop is clearly well under way.  Crusting is usually a problem where I plant, so keeping the ground moist is a must, especially after the ground has been rained on.  Birds will eat their share.  Be generous.  Better to put on too much seed the first few times than not enough.  Wheat sprouts quickly, usually providing a green cover in less than two weeks.

From Winter Wheat ...

[Photo:  Wheat beginning to ripen.  Notice around the edges the red clover, the seed for which was scattered on top of the wheat as it began to emerge from dormancy in late February and early March.  The wheat provides shelter for the clover to get started.  It is a "nurse" crop for the clover.  The clover will sit safely under the scythe while the wheat is harvested and come on fast after the wheat has been removed.]

Harvesting Wheat 

Winter wheat begins ripening in the South in early June and harvest time moves progressively north until it ends in Canada in early August.  (Indiana, late June.)  You can tell that wheat is getting ripe when it begins to lighten in color, eventually turning yellow and then brown.  Another indication is that the heads begin to "crook" (where they had been fairly rigidly straight).  Logsdon gives an almost poetic description of how to tell the wheat is ready:  "Pull a few heads, rub the kernels out in the palm of your hand, blow away the chaff like a pro, and chew a few grains.  If crunchy hard, the grain is rip, if at all chewy soft, it is not yet ripe" (p. 76).  Logsdon suggests that you ask a farmer with a combine to help harvest wheat on more than 1/2 acre, but I suggest that if you planted by hand, you should be able to harvest easily enough by hand.  If you are hand harvesting, you do not want to wait until the wheat is completely ripe, because you'll lose too many grains in the harvesting process.  Rather, cut it a little green and let it finish ripening in the relative safety of a garage (or arranged in shocks outside).

From Winter Wheat ...

  First, cut the wheat with a scythe, leaving 3-4 inches of wheat stubble.

From Winter Wheat ...

Then rake and gather the wheat (wheat heads still on the straw).  You can either gather the wheat and lay it out flat in a garage..or do the traditional and highly labor intensive job of gathering the wheat into bundles and stacking the bundles in shocks outside to complete the ripening.  If you try the latter, the bundles should be about 8" in diameter and there should be about 14 bundles per shock.

From Winter Wheat ...

[Photo: traditional method practiced on an Amish farm in Ohio.]

When the wheat has completely ripened, either outside in the shocks or under cover from the rain, the fund begins.

Threshing Wheat

From Winter Wheat ...

You can remove the wheat berries from the head of wheat by bashing them with just about anything.  Put a bundle of wheat with the heads together on a sheet spread out for that purpose on a concrete floor and beat them with part of a rubber hose or old mop handle or plastic baseball bat until you knock the seeds off the stalk.

After you gather up most of the straw, pour the chaff and wheat berries into a five gallon bucket.

Winnowing Wheat

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To remove the chaff, pour the wheat back and forth between two buckets in front of a fan set at a speed high enough to blow the chaff away and low enough not to blow the wheat seed away from the bucket.

Grinding Wheat

In order to bake the wheat into cookies, cakes, and bread, it has to be ground into flour.  You can do this with an electric blender or coffee grinder, or you can do it by hand with an old fashioned kitchen mill.  I use a Porkert Flour Mill, as you can see below.

From Winter Wheat ...

From Winter Wheat ...

Wheat in a Crop Rotation

As stated above, rotation is crucial, even in the garden.  Take a look at the full garden plan.  

Here is Tumbledown's 4-year garden rotation, including wheat, as borrowed and modified from Gene Logsdon (Small-Scale Grain Raising):

	Spring	Fall
Year 1	Winter Wheat grows until harvested in mid-summer.  (See fall of Year 4.)  Red Clover is broadcast seeded into the wheat in February and March, just prior to the last hard freeze.  Clover can be cut once and dried or fed to rabbits or, if growth has been too slow, left to be plowed under the following spring.	Let clover recover from cutting and stand over winter.
Year 2	Amend soil by plowing under the clover from previous season and adding peat, manure, compost, greensand, and bone meal.  Plant tomatoes.	Pull tomato plants at frost and broadcast-sow rye into the mulch.
Year 3	Plow or till under the mulch and rye from previous fall and plant beans and other legumes.  In favorable season, may get two legume crops in succession.	Plow under legume residues and plant rye in half the rows; amend soil (see Spring of Year 2 above) and plant cold hardy Cruciferae (kale, turnips, etc.) and pre-plant overwintering lily family (onions, garlic) in the other half of rows.
Year 4	Plow or till under rye and amend soil (see Spring of Year 2 above); plant spring peas, lettuce, brocolli, and the rest of lily and cruciferae families as desired.	Plow residues and plant winter wheat.

Note:  Red Clover, in addition to fixing nitrogen and generally improving the soil condition, is used to feed the domestic rabbits at Tumbledown farm.  Their droppings are an important part of our compost.

Wheat Pests and Diseases:

Lodging

Lodging is when the wheat leans by more than 45 degrees from vertical.  (Thus increasing the likelihood of grain loss.)  Wheat that is heavy and high-yielding may be hit by late spring and early summer storms and blown flat.  This makes it easy for vermin to steal and hard to harvest.

Hessian Fly

The Hessian Fly is the most significant of all wheat pests.  It actually controls the wheat plant's development.  An adult fly lays eggs on the plant leaves. After hatching, tiny, red larvae crawl down to the base of the wheat where they feed on the plant. If the plant isn't resistant to the insect, the larvae inject chemicals from their saliva into the plant that cause the plant to stop growing and actually begin producing more sugar and protein in order to feed the larvae.  Planting the most current resistant varieties and planting after the Hessian "fly date" (a method known and used by farmers as a means of control for hundreds of years; see the Hessian Fly safe planting dates map in the book How to Do Things) are the most effective means currently available to gardeners.  (See Purdue publications on Hessian Fly.)   Hessian Fly news.

"Take All"

A soil fungus, for which there is only prevention, no cure.  Prevent by growing wheat in fertile soil and rotating your crops.

Birds, Rabbits, etc.

Rabbits will get after garden wheat in earnest as it begins to ripen if the wheat is not behind a fence.  Birds will also do their fair share of damage as the wheat ripens.  Best to harvest and protect the wheat so that it finishes ripening in the relative safety of the garage (or in bundles in shocks, where it is less vulnerable to weather and various pests than it is standing in the field or garden).

Water and Temperature Requirements for Wheat

Wheat is a cool season crop that matures before the hottest part of the summer.  The minimum frost-free growing season is about 100 days. That means wheat can be grown throughout the continental United States, especially when you add the fact that only 15 to 20 inches of precipitation are necessary to make a crop.  There is even some very dry region wheat growing (10-15 inches annually) that manages to get a crop every two years by allowing fields to go without vegetation for a year to accumulate moisture in the soil.  It hardly needs saying that Indiana rain and temperatures are very nearly ideal for growing wheat in the garden.  The best combination is a cool, moist growing season followed by a dry season for ripening and harvest.

Nutrients and pH:

For instructions about improving your soil condition, see Logsdon's Gardener's Guide to Better Soil or Tumbledown's soil fertility page.  Logsdon indicates that traditional farmers were able to provide all the nutrients needed for wheat in a rotation by manuring at a rate of several tons of manure per acre (+ two tons of ground rock phosphate per acre).  This in combination with green manuring and use of legumes in the rotation is enough.  "Chemical farmers" often use 30 lbs of nitrogen per acre at planting, followed by another 30 lbs in the spring.  At any rate, a soil test is recommended and will come with recommendations for improving the N-P-K and pH of your own soil.  Remember, there are organic alternatives, including compost, for improving your soil.   The optimum pH for wheat is nearly neutral (6.4 pH).  The soil in my garden tests at pH 7.9, so I must still work to amend the soil over time.  (For the plan to replace nutrients removed by crops and to amend the soil, follow the previous link or scroll up to the rotation chart above.)  Nonetheless, despite the high pH and nutrient deficiencies of my garden, wheat has been easy to grow, when the pests leave it alone.  

Wheat Production:

I haven't paid much attention to how much wheat I get.  High yield isn't yet the point for me.  I save some (plenty, since it all must be ground by hand) in the freezer for family use and feed the rest along with the straw to the rabbits.  The combined wheat and straw cuts down significantly on the summer feed bill. Next year I plan to weigh and count and report here on the results.

Wheat Bibliography:

Logsdon, Gene.  Small-Scale Grain Raising.  Rodale Press.

Purdue Extension Wheat Agronomy Guide, AY-244.  (For large farming operations, but also yields some useful info for gardeners.)

Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. "Grains," pp. 282-284.