While I did grow oats, it was mostly as a cover crop, and did not attempt to harvest/thresh/roll them. I will relate the little I recall from my research some years back:
Oats are NOT frost tolerant at all, unlike wheat and rye. So one has to plant with that in mind. An advantage if you are growing a cover crop as winter will terminate it for you.
Hulling oats is supposed to be hard to do (at least by hand). So if being grown for consumption you may want to try a hull-less variety.
Commercial rolled oats are made by steaming the oat kernels and then flattening them. That may or may not work depending on if your home roller can handle steamed grain. Alternatively you could just roll them raw to get a “wheat flake” type product (have done this does cook into an oatmeal similar to steel cut oats), or chop up the dry kernels to get a steel cut oat type product. You could pick up some hulled oats at a “health food store” and experiment with the various “rolling” alternatives before you grow, if you are concerned.
By the way the oats we grew on a larger scale we soaked in water. A neighbor was a family friend and helped me before he passed away with many projects. He taught me to soak the oats to feed them to the pigs we ate. I usually bought the piglets for $20 each and got 2 -5. I grew reids yellow dent corn, indian corn , and oats for them. Then we just split the meat and gave away extra grain to anyone in need if we had leftovers. We never could eat that much meat so extra went to family or close friends.
I will be experimenting with some grains on a very small scale this year: hulless barley, hulless oats, rice (in buckets), and grain sorghum; also pseudograins of amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat. I have some extra “pennuda” hulless oats if you are interested @Matt_in_Pennsylvania.
This thread may give some people some ideas for harvesting their wheat and rye since i use the same basic methods to harvest those grains as i do mustard Mustard seed Harvest
Sounds like the yield on the improved variety is still pretty low, but it can also be cut once for hay. On a small scale it might be a lot easier than annuals, I really don’t know all that much about grains in general though.
I have done a little grain on a backyard scale. I have tried dry corn, sorghum, oats, buckwheat, wheat, and amaranth. Here are a couple writeups I did on various versions of urban backyard grain growing.
By far the most productive, easiest to grow, and easiest to process has been dry corn. Second place in productivity per square meter has been sorghum. I have a lot of trouble with birds going after grain seeds and basically have to net over them until the plants grow up a little - though this has not been an issue with corn.
If I had more space I would like to do a little more grain growing. It is interesting to go through the whole process, and it really makes you appreciate buying flour!
The oats I raised were the hull less ones from johnny seed. I had a lot of trouble with birds, and processing the grain was a lot of work too even though they were mostly without hulls. Those couple bowls of oatmeal we got out at the end were very tasty though!
All of the small grains seem to labor intensive for me on a small scale. (Hand labor ) just too much work for the yield .
Corn is worth my time .I grow hickory king corn for hominy/ masa .
Sesame has also been worth my time .
I’d check into the details of the varieties you’re thinking of growing, and how they are harvested/processed. One of the advantages of most modern varieties is that they are easier to thresh (separate the hull from the kernel). Some grains are next to impossible to get the hulls off without machinery (regular oats comes to mind there). Other advantages are the seed heads holding together and not shattering when ripe, etc.
I don’t recall the details for Einkorn. I did try to grow it some years ago, but it did not do well for me and so can’t say about the harvesting/processing. One that did do well here is Turkey Red wheat. In fact I still use primarily Turkey Red, although I buy it from a farm.
how hard is sesame to get going? from what I read I might not have right conditions for it. it gets dry and hot here.
I did hulless oats last year-got near none to sprout. this year I have amaranth and lentils in along with the corn. corn is a bust so I’m holding out hope for lentils and amaranth. sorghum always does really well for me but I grow it for the syrup from the stalks, not the grain.
I keep trying small patches of wheat, but it really is a lot of work to get the food out of it.
Yes, I’d agree. I grew some wheat just to see if I could do it. I can, but as you say it is a lot of work. As long as wheat is available from farms with modern harvesting equipment, that’s where I’ll be getting it.
Sesame is not too hard but it needs to be started early, some strains don’t work here. They need to long of a season
The one that works for me I got from Monticello
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I just thought I would list what I am experimenting with for interested parties. I hope to come back with photos next spring/summer.
Kochfield Rye (Secale celeale)
Red Fife (Triticum aestivum)
Swiss Spelt (Triticum aestivum)
Ethiopian Blue Tinge Emmer (Triticum turgidum)
Iraq Durum (Triticum turgidum)
Sin El Pheel (Triticum turgidum)
Toulouse Emmer (Triticum turgidum)
White Sonora (Triticum aestivum)
Black and Tan Einkorn (Triticum monococcum)
Hard Red Turkey (Triticum )
Tibetan Purple Barley (Hordeum vulgare)
I am not growing any grains right now (except as cover crops in dormant beds), but did experiment with them in the past.
I have tried: oats (hull-less), einkorn, emmer, Turkey Red, and rye. In my locale (8300’ in the rockies), only the rye and turkey red did really well. The Turkey Red did very well and we actually got a pretty good harvest of that. But I’d suspect you’ll be able to get good results from a bunch of others where you are.
Be aware that some of the older grains (and a few new ones too) are pretty hard to thresh by hand. Regular oats and spelt come to mind, but there are probably others too. Worth checking out unless you are growing for critter feed.
We’ve had requests at the local farmers market for Rouge de Beaudeux wheat, but wasn’t able to find a field to put it this year in the rotation/prices not what we want. I’m planning on growing some on a small scale though just to see how it would take our climate. I’m hoping it will shade out the sandburs and give me seeds.
Looks like we will be harvesting the buckwheat by hand though
I experimented with amaranth this year. A 45’ row of “Hot Biscuits” amaranth produced about 7 cups of seed. I’m sure I lost some during the threshing/winnowing process—which was low-impact work, but fairly tedious. It took me about five hours to process this.
Growing the amaranth itself was easy and cheap. If one has the room (and some help processing it!) it would be worth experimenting with as a supplemental nutrition source.
Are there higher yielding varieties? At the rate “Hot Biscuits” produced for me this year, it would take about 100’ of row to produce a gallon of seeds.
@JeremiahT That is quite a commitment to separate the seeds from the heads. I grew amaranth once, mostly as an ornamental, and let it go to seed thinking I’d collect them. About 10 minutes in I gave up. Of course I only had 4 or 5 plants, so I knew it wouldn’t amount to too much.
It is great stuff and very healthy, but it is definitely a big commitment to grow it on your own as a significant crop. There must be some type of mechanical thresher/winnower, but probably not viable on small scale.
I hope to come back with photos next spring/summer.
