Growing Wheat - with hand tools

[@jeffjones9792]

The way the world is progressing, won't be long before we all have a patch for producing flour! Maybe sunflowers for cooking oil too! Great video thanks.

[@hermansacres]

Yeah, it's uncertain times for sure. Better to learn it before I have to :D. Have you tried growing wheat yet? I actually have sunflowers in my plan for next years growing seasons! I'll see if I can harvest it with my combine from -63, and it would be great fun to try to extract some oil for it. Thanks Jeff!

[@jeffjones9792]

No but grown a patch of Fonio. A West African favorite happy in poor soil and is drought resistant. Needs a roller to crack open the outer shell of the grain before grinding the grain into flour.

[@hermansacres]

@@jeffjones9792 I did not know about Fonio before. Sounds like a good crop in dry climates and really similar to wheat in the handling, but to remove the husks sounds like a lot of work. Did you find a good technique for that? Reaching matureity in 6-8 weeks, wow. A lot of breeding work on that species to increase the seed size and to make it easier to dehusk would help a lot I guess. I wonder if i could grow then in sweden in a sandy south facing patch, I'm guessing it's going to be too cold and wet. What do you think?

[@jeffjones9792]

@@hermansacres They are having difficulies in Africa to bring this ancient crop to the market place both in quantity and economiclly. Commercial mills are the order of the day and expensive. No doubt geneticly modified, Fonio could become lower temperature and high humidity tolerant; but wait a short few years and through climate change, you could grow on a comercial basis! Here in the Uk Mediterranean style wine and salad crops are viable where once too cold to produce. It's now the world needs to realise temperatures are on the rise and things like different crops need to be examined before possible famine takes a hold.

[@hermansacres]

@@jeffjones9792 As if they haven't got enough difficulties in Africa. Ha! Yeah, certainly feels like we would have enough data and reports from scientists that politicians should do something. I guess it's the fear of opinion and that climate positive actions might affect our living standards. I am quite locked into my hardiness zones when looking for plants, but maybe I should just buy all the plants I like and see what happens in the future :P.

[@Jared_Albert]

THis was bizarrly fascinating. THank you and regards from dry warm Arizona

[@jayeverett6536]

Great video

[@hermansacres]

Thanks Jay! I'm glad you like it! Are you growing wheat or similar as well, or thinking about it?

[@jayeverett6536]

I plant wheat and oats for my deer food plots. I use no-til/regen/Organic (No pesticides or herbacides) methods as best I can. I've always just let them mature and left them for the birds and wildlife but I'm thinking about harvesting some this year for us@@hermansacres

[@csil2863]

Very good video and very interesting! I live in Northern Wisconsin in the US and grow small patches of oats and buckwheat, but do not harvest grain because it is very difficult, low yield and I am disabled. Next year I will try spring wheat. Potatoes produce more calories per unit area for human consumption and there are tools for very small tractors to manage and harvest potatoes. We slice and dry potatoes for long term storage.

[@hermansacres]

Thanks! Harvesting grain is for sure more work than harvesting potatoes and if you want to do it with machines they are more complex and quite a lot bigger. I bought a combine harvester from the sixties a couple of years back and that is a large beast for just the small patch (and a tiny one when compare to modern machines), compare that to a potatoe harvester which can be quite small and with low tech. Would be really neat with a combine harvester for the the small patches. Something that's only a hundred kg, max. Fun! Be sure to let me know how it goes! Slice and dry it!? I can't recall I heard that method for storeing potatoes before. Can you cook them as usual? Do you need to soak them beforehand?

[@MegaMrDimi]

So cool! I love it! So excited to see your journey!

[@hermansacres]

Thanks buddy! I do enjoy all the help and the support from you!

[@the_fafologist]

That first step is quite a shitty job 🤣 Glad to see you enjoying what you do. I am a city boy so no farming for me but looks fun.

[@hermansacres]

You talking crap about my precious poop? 🤣. I'm a farmboy myself. Tried to live in cities for 15 years when I studied for various things but I could never really relax there and always had this restless feeling that I wanted to do something else, somewhere else. So I am much more at peace now when I can muck about 😁.

[@Yotaciv]

Its not hard planting in rows and a few light cultivations with a hoe between the rows lol makes for an easier harvest. Potassium makes for stronger straw and more upright plants. Good old 0-0-60 works well. I planted 30 grams of einkorn and 10 grams of durum and got about the same as you in a 8.4 sq m plot. 10 grams per sq m seems right. 10 g per sq m of 30-0-0 with 3-5% iron at planting, another 10g when they get 8 leaves and another 10 grams as the stems elongate before the head apear.

[@hermansacres]

Maybe I should give that a try next year :). Thanks!

[@TheSunnyTrails]

Growing spring wheat right now it’s about 3-5 inches tall getting some tip burn but hoping it doesn’t hurt it long term

[@hermansacres]

Let's hope so! I have some autumn wheat that's about 3-4 inches I think. What location are you growing spring wheat in? Here in Sweden it's too late for autumn wheat and almost half a year too early for spring wheat :).

[@TheSunnyTrails]

@@hermansacresa little late (KZbin no longer gives me notifications about comment replies) but I’m in Queensland Australia, up north in Hervey bay at the time, it didn’t grow very well as I grew it through the grass, I prepared another bed without grass similar to how you did it and got great results

[@hermansacres]

@@TheSunnyTrails Better late than never! Unless it's some bug, you should be able to configured that. I have felt that sometimes the notifications are a bit shakey on comments, at least on replies for some reason. I thought a lot about trying to grow cereal without having to disrupt the earth as much, so it's interesting to hear that you grew it in grass. Since it didn't fare so well I don't have to try it :P. Nice to hear the results were great the other time around! What are your goals with growing wheat? Mine are to grow my own energy need, and my own flour.

[@solo_nakka]

Please tell after how many days you stopped giving water

[@hermansacres]

I think I stopped when they felt well established. Say +15 cm in height It was some time ago so I don't remember exact I'm afraid. This summer I did grow wheat without watering at all and that worked as well. Sweden did not have a lot of rain in the first half, and they weren't perfectly established but it did work.

[@sandramcrae3276]

Very informative, thanks for the video.

[@hermansacres]

Thanks Sandra! Are you growing wheat in your garden?

[@PeterSedesse]

One of the annoying parts of this is that there is no innovation for small scale grain production. The tools you used are basically what we have. All of the innovation goes towards very huge scale wheat production. If you think about something like the Jang seeder, or the Greens Harvester... there is no equivalent small scale tool for grain production.

[@hermansacres]

Yeah. I guess the innovation we want is the one we make ourselves. I have seen a couple of small grain sorters built, and I am thinking of some time in the future building my on. It would be nice if it could harvest as well.

[@creeperking0017]

wheat is one of my favorite things to grow, love ur video. might i sugest aktualy planting them in rows / furrows with about 5-6 inches of space imbetween each row, i just mesured with my knife (with blade extended) is 6 and 1/2 inches and one end was at the base of one plant (with blank space imbetween) and the other was at the base of another. Gods blessings

[@creeperking0017]

also sub komment, plz remember to leave it drying after harvesting for a while. also the method i use is a sickle so i kan bind them better, then after theyve dried to my liking, i would make realy realy small bundles, take my hands (id rekomend gloves) and rub the heads imbetween my hands into a bucket. if any of my komment was konfusing tell me and i kan try to establish kontakt to make myself more klear

[@hermansacres]

I have since sowed in rows for some barley and I did like it. The orderly fashioned makes it easier to see where the crop is growing and where the weeds are. Good advice! When I have smaller amounts I too like to rub the heads when harvesting. It's an enjoyable activity to rest in.

[@saddlemkr]

Very interested in what you are doing as I live in a wheat growing part of the USA, eastern Colorado. Looking foreword to future videos.

[@hermansacres]

Do you grow wheat manually as well? This year I have tried to grow with machines, but it has been a difficult growing seasons so the results seems to be quite bad. Fun though! I do have a future video coming up of a grain dryer :).