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Hi all -- It's been a while. I never did achieve 100% homegrown but many of you have! :) Thanks for keeping this thread alive and passionately pursuing homegrown grains. We are a small subset of a relatively large hobby -- I wonder how many beer farmers there are out there? I've since graduated...

Pretty cool! Anything that limits growth should limit lodging. I bet the lawn planting limited growth through increased competition, or perhaps limited root development. It's a great result. Will be excited to see how the yield compares with commercial (plowed) yields.

My efforts are beginning to pay off in recovering after the fencing company destroyed my previous crop. Two-leaf bere seedlings are coming up nicely. I added some seeds to areas that didn't receive enough, either through my own error when planting or through failure to germinate or...

Awesome.

I'm sorry to hear it! Lodging is so deflating -- you watch with pride all season as your little plants grow big and tall, then they just get knocked down. In the past, I still got a great harvest from my lodged areas. There's not much you can do about it, so don't worry! The buckwheat...

Googling reveals: The most serious source of exposure to soil lead is through direct ingestion (eating) of contaminated soil or dust. In general, plants do not absorb or accumulate lead.

Yes, and competition between roots for nutrients and space might affect your seedlings too. Most of these crops we grow are not selected to compete in an ecosystem. People deride "monoculture," but it's been this way since the beginning of farming.

Landlord replaced the fence in my backyard over the weekend while I was out of town. The crew ransacked my yard. And they killed my crop and even covered it up with dirt. The plants that were left standing had many of their filling grains knocked out. Why would they go out of...

Oh good idea! One explanation is that if the top layer of soil never dries out, the plants grow shallow roots, then fall over. Also encouraging vegetative growth during the jointing phase (due to high nitrogen, other factors?) can lead to lodging. Right, each seed you plant yields fewer...

5 leaves with 2 tillers on the Conlon. Leaves of main plant are labeled 1-5 Tillers are T1, T2 Tiller leaves are T1-1, T1-2, etc.

Woo hoo! I finally have a back yard. It's not big, only 50 square feet, but it'll do. Oh it'll do. Removed landscaping stones (who would ever cover up arable land when there's thirsty throats to quench?) and mixed a cubic foot of steer manure into the top layer of soil. Planted Copeland at...

Malting varieties of barley are usually optimized for synchronous germination and steady, synchronous growth of the acrospire. These traits matter quite a bit in commercial malt houses, but they're not very important when you malt grains at home. Who cares if you lose 5% of your total sugar...

Is it too high for dry land farming? The question was not about conventional farming (cultivation and irrigation). I would almost always follow guidelines for something like seeding rate. Professional agriculture researchers know more than we do.

Winter crops often have a vernalization requirement. You can learn about it for each grain to make sure your winter will meet the requirements. If you decide to use those grains for a higher calling than rabbit food, do let them go to seed and completely dry on the stalk. You can malt just...

Hey Farside, If you were irrigating and fertilizing, I'd say the seeding rate isn't critically important, because the plants can tiller to some extent to fill their space. (My first crop was somewhat under-seeded, for example, but I still got a yield close to a commercial yield.) But if...

Sounds like a good idea. Barley definitely has an optimal range for spacing. Let us know how it goes! Could be a lot less expensive than shelling for a plate seeder! If it works out, I think I would do the same in my next planting.

What a difference soil and seeding rate make. Sorry for the mixed results. I can't help seeing a silver lining, though -- you learned a great deal from the variation and then shared it with the community. There are so few of us right now, and with every variable-yield harvest, we're building...

If I understand, you're growing feed barley to use as malting barley? This might be an uphill battle. The only real result I had from my experiment was that Conlon, even though adapted for the Upper Midwest, would grow just fine in California. You might find that the Midwest malting barleys...

Awesome! That's the dream!

Beautiful!!!