2022-06-16T07:00:00Z
I intend growing corn (for corn meal) as one of my grains. The yields are decent and threshing is easy, even completely by hand. I haven’t grown any other grain apart from a very small patch of so-called hulless barley once which wasn’t too difficult to thresh by hand though I’m not sure I’d like to thresh a large quantity.
What experience have you had with other grains - oats, rice, rye, wheat for example? I don’t have any equipment for threshing so all would have to be completely threshed by hand (or foot).
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Mark R
I love both barley and oats but have not been very successful in growing either one of them. Some kind of black moldy disease infects the seed heads. I know they will both grow in my climate or should. They are priority for me starting next year, or maybe this fall, to collect up a bunch and try to start a landrace, selected against that disease and ease of thrashing.
I do have a little bit of each that successfully matured stored in the freezer, just need to find some more kinds to mix in. I haven’t researched yet on how easily they cross pollinate.
Ray S
According to the book Hybridizing Crop Plants oats rarely cross pollinate, less than 1%, and barely almost as rarely.
Greenie
I did a wheat and barley trial last year and frankly, only khorasan/kamut threshed really, really easily. I only got through threshing some of it, to be honest, because some were just really rough to do, so the easy ones got done and the rest is languishing.
My triticale got ergot; I hadn’t grown rye because I have an ergot sort of climate and I don’t want to mess with that.
Generally awnless barley was the easiest to thresh, after khorasan, but that’s a big generality.
I don’t know what khorasan would cross with, I know there’s a lot of weird ploidy in wheat, but I have definitely considered trying to get it crossed with something and get those big, easy-threshing grains into a diverse population.
Ray S
I’ve read that khorasan is a tetraploid durum style wheat. Nice to know that it is reasonably easy to thresh.
Lowell M
There’s some low tech methods for threshing small grains like barley, wheat, etc. Small Scale Grain Thresher - YouTube There are other variations and you can make it fit to a 5 galleon bucket if you’re processing smaller amounts. Then just winnow it and sift and you’ll have fairly clean grain. Otherwise, if it’s dry enough my barley threshes very easily. I’m growing gopal barley, 2nd year, only for preservation goals at the moment.
https://www.sherckseeds.com/ also has a lot of info on growing small grains and low tech equipment.
Greenie
Other good wheats: bishop was great, prelude was pretty good (and the earliest). Blue tinge ethiopian was awful.
Ray S
I’ve sown a short row of khorasan wheat to experiment with. Very keen to see how it threshes. I have an Ethiopian barley that is very easy to thresh though it’s only a two row barley. It has large awns too but I’m hoping that will discourage birds!
This year I noticed that my Saskatchewan Rainbow corn was very easy to shell by hand, Gaspe was variable, and Saskatoon White was truly awful. So, not a grains thing, but corn also has some variability in ease of shelling.
i grow hulless varieties of wheat, barley, rye, and oats. They thresh easily by beating with a stick, or stomping with feet. Ease of threshing was a primary selection criteria for me. I don’t have the inclination to try to deal with difficult to thresh grains.
Then I clean them by screening and winnowing.
My productivity to harvest, thresh, and clean is around 5 pounds of seed per hour. That’s about a week’s worth of food for an hour labor.
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I’ve grown turkey red wheat and a variety of rye I have had for awhile, both are very easy to thresh by hand I just harvest with a scythe and make a bundle. I have all the heads in the bundle facing one direction then I place the bundle on a sheet and wrap the sheet over top. Then I just beat the hell out of it with a stick
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Do you get a long dry period before you do this? I notice the dryer they are the more easily they thresh.
Just threshed a small, experimental rye harvest. It threshed very easily. I’ll grow a much larger patch next time. We’ve had unusually humid weather the last few weeks so I’m still waiting for the wheat to dry down thoroughly.
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Yes I wait until everything is as dry as it will be.
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