#graintrials

[amyofarms]

Ethiopian Barley starting to head out. Experimenting with grains. #amyofarms #barley #graintrials #grains #heritagegrains

[boxturtlebakery]

I’ve changed in the past few years to a no-till approach for the grain trials. At my scales of < 1 acre, broadcasting cover crop seeds and scything down vegetation has worked well. Problem weeds can be hoed individually. Scythe or kama hand-harvesting works well at my small scales, but I’m interested in trying out some form of a seed stripping mechanism for this year’s harvest so that I can just scythe down the remaining straw in the field and not have to transport for threshing all that volume. 

The big problem then is trying to get the seeds planted effectively and efficiently. Broadcast of grain seeds or seedballs I think needs a much better established set of soil organic matter and surface residue and even then would be pretty haphazard for small plots. Manual efforts with individual seeds or a hoe is very time-consuming. I’ve tried a single-wheel cultivator type device too and that certainly helps, but was not great either. People scaling up can invest in a heavy duty seed drill, but for no-till the scaled-down concept is too light weight to cut through residue and ground cover. This past Fall I planted most of my trial varieties with this Chinese-style Jab Seeder shown above - imported by Easy Digging. I have one without the fertilizer side dressing feature. Even in my no-tilled pasture-type conditions, I find the sharp peak pretty consistently pierces the ground cover and neatly allows it to close over the seed. I used some squishable foam and tape to fill in the #1 seed side to work for my wheat seeds - it’s not perfect, but it’s sufficient. I did 500 sq ft/hour changing out a bunch of different varieties to plant out 8′x10′ plots. The ground marks can be subtle enough that it hard to stick to your pattern so I might need to lay out a guide measuring tape when doing long rows.

[boxturtlebakery]

New Location for 2017

The grain trials have been going along slowly, but successful enough that I've been looking to make sure I had the security of knowing the land was going to continue to be available and that I could scale them up. I also wanted to have someone who is interested in the same overall approach as me. I met a farmer today who seems like just that kind of fit. (If names like Fukuoka and Toensmeier excite you, then you are that same kind of person!) This farmer is going for an approach called Restoration Agriculture which fits annuals like grains into a multi-layered perennial and animal ecosystem. It's a long process, but I’m excited to get started.

[boxturtlebakery]

Here’s the report on the 2017 harvest. The soil still needs a lot more organic matter and it’s hard to hurry that along so I still feel like I am yet really able to see how these varieties will do. All these varieties are wheat - except for the one emmer. Except as noted, they were all planted by drop seeding a 180 sq ft plot that had been sprinkley w/fertilizer and lime to get it to to basic wheat growing conditions post soil test. I harvest these June 13th (all a little early) and let them dry in shocks in my attic which made it very easy and worked well given that it rained a bunch of days since then.

The bad: My Spelt (broadcast w/a thick mulch of Spelt hulls) got over-run also two soft wheats - a VT Read (15g) and an unknown variety did poorly. (125g)

So so were the Ukrainka and Sirvinta (I’m not sure I kept everything separated properly and for part of the Sirvinta the awns looked wrong - produced 275g)

The best where the Frederick Soft Wheat (90 row feet planted in furrows w/biochar and bunny poo on top produced 310g), Banatka (285g of mostly plump seeds), and Blau Emmer (290g but some seeds shriveled. Heads and straw looked amazing though). 

Everything threshed well through my metal-bladed leaf blower. I would pick out the big straw pieces do a little screening or hand gravity sifting on it before shaking it over a screen in a squirrel fan air stream to gently separate out the chaff and lightweight grains. I think for this year I should furrow plant underneath my windrows on the cover crop bed and then rake back on there as a mulch and maybe winter pea cover the in-between spaces. Lightweight seeds should get floated off before I plant too. 

[chezjosebk]

#einkorn #graintrials #hudsonvalley #latergram (at Migliorelli Farm)

[chezjosebk]

Mark sorrels, Hudson valley small grains field day. @migliorelli @ansonmills #latergram #graintrials #grainaisance (at Migliorelli Farm)