Requesting some basic cultivation advice for my grain trials

[Steph S]

I have a small plot (packet) of Blue Tinge Ethiopian emmer that I planted in April and has just begun to flower.

The BTE emmer is about two feet tall, not looking especially healthy after the alternating wet, dry, hot, freezing, hot again season, and it isn't in any special ground, It is a medium to light green color with a fair bit of yellow/brown tips from one stress or another. I don't recall giving it any fertilizer at planting in this bed that was garlic last season.  So I had been thinking to take some of the pile of (fairly rotted) horse manure and apply between the rows, then I saw that seeds were starting to form and thought best to ask advice.

- would this be a bad time to fertilize them
- any idea how long I should expect from onset of flowering to harvest time?

[William Schlegel]

I've grown Ethiopian blue tinged wheat here. Still have some seed but the partridge eat too many so taking a break. It like most spring sown wheats in Montana gets ripe a bit later in the summer but well before fall.

I've never particularly fertilized wheat. If I were going to now I would probably use an OMRI listed liquid fertilizer and save any manure or compost for something else- maybe next year's wheat bed? I wouldn't expect it to make any difference in yield at this juncture but might improve seed quality for next year.

Since it is blooming I would expect it to set some seed unless there are partridge. Thereby more than replenishing your packet but not enough for a loaf of bread yet.

Though if you really baby a wheat or barley plant it can get huge. Really tiller out and each seed can return you many seeds. But generally by the time it is blooming it is done tillering. I generally don't manage that and get a small increase or even a partridge mediated decrease. Something to strive for next year.

[Steph S]

Thanks, William.
Re predators although no partridge, I'm sure there are many around that would gladly take the harvest, as happened before with my barley.  So just looking for a ballpark of days or weeks from first flowering to ripeness would help me to plan just how to deal with that issue.  With the barley I wasn't sure it was ready and left it, then they came and took it all.

I won't worry about adding anything but water if it's senseless at this point. 

Yes it would be nice to multiply the seed enough to do a large bed next year and actually get enough to eat.  So goes the experiment.  Good to know that they can produce more if fed more generously, I'll certainly consider that next time.  I read that high fertility soil may make them prone to lodge, but they aren't tall enough for that to be a problem. 

edited to add, I googled for wheat stages of growth and realized they are just 'heading' or coming out of 'boot' stage so the actual flowering may begin in a week or two, followed by a few days of pollination then  'several weeks' of ripening.  So I'm looking at a month or more before I should start worrying about harvest..
https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/id/id-422.pdf

[Steph S]

Well, the emmer is looking pretty dry overall and I'm tempted to cut it now although there are a few bits of green stem and a few later heads with a little green left on the underside of the head.   Is it okay to cut and dry them down before they are 100% brown?
These turned out to be very different than expected btw.  Only a couple of heads look like the Blue Tinge Ethiopian.  Most of them had a lot of burgundy color on them instead.   A few of the smallest ones have some noticeable black or dark color on the heads after drying, while the others are just uniformly brown.  There is a lot of variation in height as well.
I was thinking I should cut them close to the ground and then sort them for height as part of the selection process.
Any advice?

[Greenie DeS]

The seeds are ripe when they pass the fingernail test -- when you can pull out a kernel and it won't dent with your fingernail.

Mine is getting mowed down by voles pretty bad so I've been considering pulling anything that's fairly firm up by the roots and hanging it to dry that way.

My prelude wheat is pretty much done but none of the other wheats are. For a benchmark, my marquis isn't either, and my blue tinge is in between the two in hard dough stage. The barleys are getting there but also not quite finished. My khorassan (the only emmer wheat I have) is behind the marquis, still in soft dough stage, and I wouldn't cut it for awhile.

As a sidenote, I tried my wheat in rich garden soil a couple years ago and it was very very slow and erratic. This year it's on a medium rich sandy soil on a very dry south slope and it's much more uniform and looks like it will ripen early.

[Steph S]

Thank you, that's very helpful.
I found a thread on Permies that said it is okay to harvest any time past the 'milk' stage, and to hang or otherwise dry them completely before threshing.  Since I just have a packet plot it was not a big deal to cut the majority which are definitely hardening up and to leave the few plants that are obviously still green.  I did cut a few green ones in the process but I reckon if they don't produce viable seed it is part of the selection process for earliness.  We had a really hot summer overall (in spite of the cold periods and blasts of frost and even snow) so a colder year could for sure make this too late for me to do as a garlic rotation.  Not to mention that we can get a lot of rain.
I have another wheat that isn't close to ready yet - was supposed to be Akmolinka but looks more like White Sonora or similar, scanty awn just the tips.
I took some pics of both, and will post the different phenos on the supposed Blue Tinge Ethiopian (emmer ? according to what I read) since several of you have grown it.  This seems like there was a lot of crossing with other sizes and colors in the mix.  There is one much taller and later plant that looks like pics of BTE online, and a couple of short ones with similar color.

I wouldn't call it a rich garden soil in that bed particularly - good organic content but fairly shallow, garlic was in it the year before and no ferts added before planting.  The other wheat is in similar soil situation - it is tall overall and a much more even stand.

The back beds where I planted oats, mustard, barleys and sunflowers are richer and deeper.  Barley lodged really badly in rain and wind, that was disappointing to see as it would be a disaster on a larger scale.  Moose also sampled the barley but didn't touch the wheat.  Preferred the awnless Faust even in the boot stage.  Ate one oat plant! and left the rest.  Oats in the same bed didn't budge when the wind blew down the tall pea trellis behind them, I was impressed by that. 

As you can tell, I'm just experimenting with grains in small plots and really no prior experience worth counting.

I have some seed of Goldkorn Spelt which I assume is for fall planting and should go in the ground this week.  Found a publication online which said for our area fall grains should be planted mid August.   
I also wondered about fall planting some of this emmer, but not sure if it is safe to do that or not.

[Greenie DeS]

I'd like to see what all your grains did! I will take pictures of mine at harvest and put them up somewhere too. It seems like we have some overlap, I have amolinka too. Everything I grew was very uniform though. What were your seed sources?

[Steph S]

I would love to see your grains too!
I got a bunch of things from Salt Spring Seeds:  the Goldkorn Spelt, Blue Tinge Ethiopian, Akmolinka, Terra oats, Arabian Blue barley.  The Faust barley came from a swap two years ago - definitely true to type and germinated fine in spite of the 2 yr gap.
I've been looking at Prairie Garden Seeds as a next source... love their selection but of course I am an ignoramus when it comes to grains.
I grew barley once before, I forget what variety, and some other creature (likely rat) harvested the entire crop while I was working in town one week.  So although it did pretty well I have no comments or follow up on that one!  Except maybe, harvest early. 

[William Schlegel]

I sometimes harvest grains or wild native grasses as soon as the stem turns golden. I figure sugar transport has ceased at that point. Even at soft dough stage you get some viability. Though ideal is very hard. Though I have to fight the partridge for small stands of grain. I've wondered about planting a much larger planting. Fill them up on some boring common grain and hide my little bits of rare grains deep in the field.

[Steph S]

I definitely am into the trap crop idea.  For moose, it's peas, evidently.  Grouse are here in spring and fall, so they would miss out on a summer grain harvest if they are interested - at least until they find out about it and decide to be here.  But they nip anything green in the spring so I will have to use row cover.  I'm worried about fall planting grains because something ate the perennial wheat I planted last year.    I had chicken wire over it, so it had to be something like slugs I guess.  Black Arion.   Trap crop for them is carrots....

So here are a couple pics from July to start with.  Almost all the grain is some shade of red.  There's one tall one about twice the height of the others with the 'blue tinge' although it doesn't show up well in the pic.  Later found a few short ones similar, but not more than a couple.  And some odd green ones which maybe are the still green ones left in the bed.

[Steph S]

Here are some that I left behind after my cut yesterday, still green and unripe, both large and small.  They are all colors and sizes.  Some awns are short, some are long, some are  black too.  The big 'blue tinge' is among them but looks like it's now developing some red as well.

[Steph S]

Sorted the harvest by height. The pile at the front are still a bit green, all sizes.  In the sorted piles the smallest ones are also very thin stemmed and many have very short spikes.  Most of the dark ones are in that group, looking quite black.   These have been hung to dry completely before I take a closer look at the grains. 

[Steph S]

This is the wheat that came to me as Akmolinka.  I was expecting "flame shaped heads" and big awns, but this wheat is awnless.  It did pretty well and I certainly enjoyed gawking at the pretty colors (never seen wheat before) but it would be nice to know what kind of wheat it is.  Any ideas?
I had the luxury of harvesting only the dried ones before a rain.  Dark nut brown at maturity, and a couple of white ones that might be stray seed of a different kind?  IDK.   I noticed that their stems were distinctive having a purple color antho between some nodes as they dried.

[Steph S]

In other grains, the Terra oats are fantastic.  Will definitely grow again, because they stood up so well to the wind.   In the pic, there is Terra and some mustards standing tall on the left side.  The big pea trellis behind them blew down on a windy day, and the Arabian Blue barley on the right was totally crushed.
The barley is just starting to ripen and it has developed a lovely pink-purple color instead of blue... I'm wondering, could this be a soil pH issue?  Making my blue grains blush? 
In any case I would say that we had a less windy summer than normal, so does not bode well for plantings of barley.   I decided to tie them up today, and when I did I realized that quite a few heads are gone.  Everything that was on the ground is now headless, and there are a few awns sprinkled around.  When animals harvest your crop before it's ripe, it can only mean a lot of trouble.    So not feeling enthused about barley overall.
Both of the wheats stood up well, especially the 'Akmolinka' or whatever it is.
The emmer was fairly bent over as it ripened but not too much breakage, and being short may have helped.  Last pic, not long before harvest. It was earliest too.
Did not have any animal predation on either wheat or oats, which is promising.
Spelt is in the ground now, and I'm just hoping I can protect the young shoots from whatever ate the Eezer wheat last fall.  Slugs, could be.

[Steph S]

After a little reading about wheat disease the other night, I found a green head of the 'Akmolinka' turning white.  This was a tiller on the same group that produced white heads.   If not mistaken, I believe this is the dreaded Fusarium Head Blight, and if so, the white kernels would be full of mycotoxins.  Another green head had an orange color on one kernel, which would be sporing and spreading if it's FHB.    I pulled these and the remaining stems and roots of the others, which are unmistakeable for the dark colors between some joints of the stems, and disposed all of the above.
There are only a few heads left still ripening but I'm watching them for any signs of the same.
If I understood correctly, this disease turns the kernels white but uninfected kernels are safe to eat, even on the same plant, as long as separated?  Will have to double check that and look for any white ones in the crop (although I didn't see any afaik).