# Growing Wheat



## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

I'm looking to grow some hard red winter wheat with a planting this fall. I've seen lots of threads on here about buying wheat berries, but the inevitable results seems to be grinding them for food. I'm hoping that folks who grow wheat will be able to answer a few questions.

1. Where can I buy wheat to plant, and what do I need to look for? I'm pretty sure I want to find organic, but what else do I need to be wary of?

2. How do I plant the wheat? Some websites seem to say that you just scatter the seeds and churn the dirt up so the seeds are a few inches deep. Others seem to say that you need a seed drill to plant them into neat rows. Yet more say you need to start them in flats and then transplant them after they've grown a bit. So, who (or how many) are right?

3. Any other tidbits that I should know about? I welcome any and all advice.


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## airdrop (Jan 6, 2012)

You should be able to buy it at any grain elevator in your area . if you don't have a drill to plant with, the old way was to broad cast it but the depth is critical as with any seed. all seeds have a depth that has to be watched , the little plant that grows out of the seed has to break the surface to sun light before it runs out of steam or it will die. How much ground are you planting ?
Try to find none hybrid wheat if you can , nowadays it's harder , each varity has a different planting depth to , the people that sell this stuff have a coding system not a depth system so ask about that ????
If you get 35 bushels to the acre that about 200 loaves of bread  , you know if you live in ohio where wheat is grown why not go out a talk to a small farm and see about buying some a harvest time next year , get some buckets ready for storage over winter.


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## lilmissy0740 (Mar 7, 2011)

I planted wheat this spring, just to see if I could. It turned out great. Tilled the plot, I walked around just throwing the wheat about. Did a small section at a time and raked it in lightly. I did put a fence around it so my chickens wouldn't eat it. So I strung some video tape about to keep birds and deer out. I used organic wheat berries that I purchased from a company here. You do have to broadcast it pretty thick. 
That's all I did. Pretty easy.


Sent from my iPad using Survival Forum


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## Toffee (Mar 13, 2012)

lilmissy0740 said:


> I planted wheat this spring, just to see if I could. It turned out great. Tilled the plot, I walked around just throwing the wheat about. Did a small section at a time and raked it in lightly. I did put a fence around it so my chickens wouldn't eat it. So I strung some video tape about to keep birds and deer out. I used organic wheat berries that I purchased from a company here. You do have to broadcast it pretty thick.
> That's all I did. Pretty easy.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Survival Forum


How did you harvest?


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## mosquitomountainman (Jan 25, 2010)

LM is spot on. We do ours the same way. Till the ground, broadcast the seed pretty thick like grass seed and rake it to help cover the seed. You'll still have some seed showing on top but don't sweat it. 

We've harvested it two ways. One by using a scythe. If you do that you'll want start earlier than a modern farmer. Cut it when the seed heads are mature but still hold the seed tightly. Cut close to the ground and tie it in bundles (shocks). Do this by taking a hand full of the cut stalks and wrapping a wheat stem around it to hold it together. Keep standing these little bundles upright together until they're 2 feet or so in diameter. Traditionally these were left to dry in the field but if you have a well ventilated building to dry them in it works better. When the wheat kernel is dry you thresh them. You can use a sickle mower to cut the wheat if you have one.

The other method we've used is to let it go in the field until the stems are dry and the seed will fall free if you shake the stem or hit the seed heads against something. At that point we cut just the top seed head portion off using scissors or a sharp knife. We tossed the seed heads in a bucket hanging from our waist. Threshing is much easier that way. 

We haven't tried this (you don't get any straw with this method) but you can also wait until the seed kernels are ready and easy to remove from the head/husks. Bend the stalk over a bucket and slap the seed heads against the side of the bucket or stretch some hail screen (AKA Hardware cloth) over the bucket and slap the seed heads against it to thresh the wheat while it's still in the field. It's kind of like removing a step in the process.

Any way you do this by hand is tedious work! Don't plant a large patch the first year! There are some good you tube videos for threshing 'machines' you can make or you can use hail screen over a large bucket. You'll still need to winnow it but in our experience that's the easiest part. 

Again, it's tedious! In a SHTF situation we'd probably just skip raising wheat, oats, etc. for human consumption. Let's of other crops are less work to harvest and plant. Corn is a good grain to grow/harvest for the homestead garden.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

All good info already. Wheat is pretty forgiving in terms of depth compared to many plants, it only has to be deep enough to remain moist for germination but it can handle being much deeper without significant problems (depending on soil type). There is certainly a benefit to having it all the same depth (as with a drill) because the seeds will be mature at a more uniform time, but this is not that critical. The rows on the other hand are just an unfortunate side effect of the seeding process, we often cross-seeded (seeded twice at different angles with half rate) to get the plants more spread out. A big benefit of the broadcast method is that weeds are much more suppressed.

There are a lot of varieties and types out there to consider, for instance bearded wheat tends to be very easy threshing, there are a few heritage varieties as well. One bonus is that there is still no GMO wheat on the market


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

You can order your wheat seed from Auguson farms (walmart.com has a great deal going)

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Hard-Red-Wheat-26-lb/22985145

and also at just about any health food store.


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

We tried growing wheat this year and had a couple problems - but the problems were definitely on our end. First, we didn't plant the spring wheat until late in the season, and I think that prevented our wheat from getting a strong start. Second, we didn't plant thick enough - the weeds took over and choked out the wheat. The final death knoll on that plot were the stink bugs - not sure how to prevent those buggers. We also had a tiny 'development' plot (planted 25 seeds of an uncommon variety in order to build a seed supply for next year) - our problem with that plot was that we missed the right time to harvest it due to family issues. I just brought it in the other day, moldy and past ripeness. Birds picked at a lot, and what's left doesn't look very good, although I might still try planting it next year and doing a better job.

I really appreciate what MMM said about being able to cut and shock it earlier than 'normal' harvest times - I think that will make a big difference for us as small scale growers harvesting by hand.

My husband's favorite grain book is Logsdon's Small Scale Grain Raising - the guy has a nice conversational tone throughout the book.

A fun place to shop for heirloom grain is Sustainable Seed Company

Please share your experience as you do this - I would love to compare notes. We will be trying again. I hear what MMM says about this being a lot of work, and I can see that he's absolutely right. But I still want to give it a better go at it, and I really want to try to grow some of the more obscure heirlooms.


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## siletz (Aug 23, 2011)

I would second the recommendation on Gene Logsdon's book. It has been a great resource to us for growing grain on a small backyard scale.


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## GaryS (Nov 15, 2011)

I hate to be a wet blanket, but unless you have a huge amount of time and energy to spend, just buy some bulk wheat for storage. If you simply want to prove a point, have fun, but to grow enough to feed a family will take far more space than the average family has, or is willing to commit to one type of plant.

Every critter imaginable likes to eat wheat...grasshoppers and livestock when it's green, every imaginable rodent once it's growing good, birds and sawflies when it gets ripe, and deer all the time. If you grow non-hybrid varieties, the yield will be far less than new varieties and you'll discover plant diseases you've never heard of before. Unless it all sprouts evenly, it won't ripen evenly and if you harvest it too early, the heads won't fill, and if you harvest too late you might get rain and it could mildew or sprout in the head...or it could hail and destroy it all.

A good crop is 35 bu. to the acre, but without equipment and chemicals you might harvest half that if everything goes right. Somewhere around 1,000-1,200 lbs. Retail prices for wheat run around $50 a bucket, and approximately 30 pails to equal your harvest. I haven't checked for a long time, but you should be able to find clean, bulk wheat to store in your own containers for less than half that price, including treating it for vermin.


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

GaryS said:


> I hate to be a wet blanket, but unless you have a huge amount of time and energy to spend, just buy some bulk wheat for storage. If you simply want to prove a point, have fun, but to grow enough to feed a family will take far more space than the average family has, or is willing to commit to one type of plant...


It's not really to prove any point in particular. Just like we grew flax this year, it's one of those things that we're curious about. Might get anywhere from a bountiful harvest of the gods to a hole in the ground haunted by a rabbit with sharp pointy teeth. Realistically, we'll probably see what we saw with flax - had an okay yield and learned a lot about the process.

Thanks for your input, including the parts I trimmed off in the quote to save space!


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

actually doing things that a person might need to do after a collapse and there for having actual experience in said action is a pretty big part of being prepared, I happen to excel at quite a few thing "they" say you can't do like that. 
Chemical have no place in food production....................


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## Elinor0987 (May 28, 2010)

I read once that wheat should be cut soon after sprouting. I forgot what the term was, it could have been "cropping" or "topping off". If I remember correctly, you're supposed to wait until the grass is about 6" high and cut it down to about 3". This will help with root formation but I'm not sure if you're supposed to do it in the spring or fall since you're planting winter wheat.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Elinor0987 said:


> I read once that wheat should be cut soon after sprouting. I forgot what the term was, it could have been "cropping" or "topping off". If I remember correctly, you're supposed to wait until the grass is about 6" high and cut it down to about 3". This will help with root formation but I'm not sure if you're supposed to do it in the spring or fall since you're planting winter wheat.


I would not recommend it, yes it should survive but it is risky for little to no benefit (at least in our area).


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## GaryS (Nov 15, 2011)

Elinor0987 said:


> I read once that wheat should be cut soon after sprouting. I forgot what the term was, it could have been "cropping" or "topping off". If I remember correctly, you're supposed to wait until the grass is about 6" high and cut it down to about 3". This will help with root formation but I'm not sure if you're supposed to do it in the spring or fall since you're planting winter wheat.


It's known as "stooling". In the cold states, nature accomplishes that when a hard freeze occurs after the wheat has emerged. The plant comes back with heavier growth that leads to a better crop, but dad always let nature handle it. Here's a link to a PDF file that explains it:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...=i5slwCQ-GId-lXbzRY7NGQ&bvm=bv.75097201,d.b2U


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

I am a person who likes to try things. No matter the success or failure, there is learning to be had, and what you learn in any of these experiments may save the lives of you or your family.

When I think of planting and harvesting an acre of wheat by hand, I can't help but wonder if I would reconsider that. There are things that you can mostly make with wheat, but now that gluten free has become such a thing, there are more options being developed to make cakes, breads, etc.

In a true SHTF situation, if I had to do the work by hand, I would plant an acre of potatoes instead of an acre of wheat. It would be much easier to harvest, for sure. I am not sure about preparing the soil and planting for potatoes. Wheat has a small window of time when it needs to be harvested. Potatoes have a much longer window, and can be kept in the ground and covered with leaves and more for a much longer time.

In the same vein as potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, and onions are what I would consider planting if I was wanting to try to come up with a year or more food for a family. 

If a person did not own enough land to plant enough for your family, there are ideas that I have heard from a man who does regular youtube videos. He plants in ditches in the deep country areas that are not mowed or sprayed with chemicals. He also plants along creek beds in the same way, in areas that are way off the beaten path that are not likely to be visited by others, and therefore not harvested by others. Planting random plots of potatoes, onions or carrots that can be harvested after your own garden may have been raided by others is another layer of being prepared. Just some thoughts. And, in a true SHTF scenario, having food planted out in the alleys and ditches that are not going to get sprayed may in fact take the pressure off people who are more prepared.


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