100% homegrown

[CitizenCane]

Hey Drummstikk,
A couple thoughts on some of your pics.

Predation: If those pics were taken here, my first guess would be cut worm but I don't know if you have them in CA. Second would be rabbits but they tend to leave a few business cards laying around. Cut worms get to about an inch long and close to a pencil around. During the day, they hide in the soil and then come out at night to feed. Scratch around a couple inches deep. One or two per ft sq can do a lot of damage. When they are disturbed, they roll up in a "C" shape. The adults are miller moths. If you have them, that might be what the chickens were after. When they pupate, the damage stops and that might be about the time the nets went up. I'm probably wrong but if it was in the Great Plains, I would bet that's the problem. From what I see, I don't think its worth trying to control.

Most of the weeds I see in your pics can be controlled by 2-4D. This is the active ingredient in Weed-be-gone and many others. It will only kill broad leaf plants if applied properly. Just be careful. If you apply it to lightly, it will make the weeds grow faster; to heavy and you will get funky looking heads on the barley and reduced yields. Spending an hour out there with a sprayer full of just water to get the rates right is still easier than hoeing.

Anyway, hope this helps.

 

[drummstikk]

Predation: cut worm

You know, it could be. I've always noticed fine strands of silk stretching over the soil. I'll dig around and check for worms.

rabbits

There is a rabbit that hangs around in the woods near the field. Could be. Solving this problem could potentially be very fun and tasty.

2-4D...funky looking heads

I used 2-4D two years ago. I think I applied it too late (for the barley) because I did get the funky looking heads, albeit with low occurrence. However it didn't seem to kill my dicot weeds. I was confused by the result.

Spraying would definitely be a lot faster than hoeing. I'm actually not even sure if I would be able to hoe down the 7.5" rows -- I think any cultivation would end up disturbing a lot of the plants.

Another idea is to spot treat the strips between rows with glyphosate. We've got a sprayer with a narrow head that could do the job.

I've been strongly influenced, however, by the comments I got last time, to "set it and forget it". Last time, I wanted to throw everything I could at the problem, but this time I want to see how the crop does with a minimalist approach. I'm also curious how people would have grown this in the 19th century, when they didn't have access to many herbicides.

Still, spraying is fast, cheap, and effective. I'll think about it.

* * *

The bere survived the freezing:

You can still see the freeze damage on the first leaves:

This is kind of interesting -- the horizontal bands are due to successive nights of freezing. The fact that the damage is limited to the edges shows that the leaf has grown horizontally from its midline since the freeze.

One thing I don't see is dark, mushy, moist tissue. Those are supposed to be the signs of the worst type of freezing damage.

 

[Brewark]

I hope your field is doing well. I checked mine this morning (here in the east bay) and ALL my plants are lodging.

Hope that as they dry out, they'll pick themselves up.

 

[drummstikk]

I hope your field is doing well. I checked mine this morning (here in the east bay) and ALL my plants are lodging.

Hope that as they dry out, they'll pick themselves up.

Oh no! Sorry to hear it! What strain are you growing? When my Conlon lodged in the past, they straightened out at the top couple of nodes, and I got plenty of yield from the lodged patches. Hope for the best!!!


My plants haven't even elongated yet -- late planting date to the rescue.

For those of you outside the Bay Area, over the weekend we had perhaps our second major rain of the winter -- that's a killer for tall plants that aren't used to saturating moisture.

The last time I grew, my plants always got knocked down by spring showers. I have switched to longer, less frequent irrigation in an attempt to develop deeper roots. Is that an option for you? Maybe you're already doing it?

I also did not fertilize this year -- there seems to be a good amount of residual nitrogen in my soil, and my landrace strain (bere) predates Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixing, so doesn't increase yield a huge amount in response to fertilizer anyway. I'm hoping this will encourage less vegetative growth and prevent lodging.

Got any pics? Lodged plants are a sad sight, but it might be informative to all of us around here to see how tall they were, and how they recover.

 

[Farside]

Well I put in a request from the gene bank for some Chevalier barley along with Khorasan durum, Emmer, and white Sonora wheats.

That will put my collection up to 8.

I guess I need to find some more land...

 

[Brewark]

Well I put in a request from the gene bank for some Chevalier barley along with Khorasan durum, Emmer, and white Sonora wheats.

That will put my collection up to 8.

I guess I need to find some more land...

I bought a packet of Sonora for this spring from http://sustainableseedco.com/

Space will seem like "the final frontier" for me to face too.

 

[Beer4ce]

my wife and I plan to get a few hundred square feet of this. Planting this spring. Also will be ordering hop rhizomes this month. Thanks for all the info!


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[drummstikk]

Great, Harrington! I remember when I first got into beer seriously in 2009, Rogue was still printing on its bottles that it uses Harrington. Do they still do this?

Gotta love that Full Circle logo. It seems the only people who want to grow their own grains are insane beer geeks and hippies -- sometimes both in the same package!

 

[thatjonguy]

Harrington is grown all over ND as I recall. Hmmm....

 

[Farside]

...It seems the only people who want to grow their own grains are insane beer geeks and hippies -- sometimes both in the same package!

I figure if someone goes to all that trouble then they must be able to make great beer

So I received my 5g sample of Chevalier in the mail today. Roll on spring!

With these rare varieties, I'm a little concerned about genetic diversity. Maybe we could set up a seed swap where we can trade like for like, or help others diversify once we have a decent amount growing.

It's going to be a few seasons before I can swap for different varieties, but I'm in a position to swap Golden Promise, Hana (the real deal from Moravia), and Chevalier for the same type and diversify genetic stock.

 

[Beer4ce]

Ive been home malting organic barley grain from the local farm supply but didnt know what type it was. These harrington seeds look to be high quality, so hopefully i can get a larger area planted after the first harvest. Just did my first two batches of homebrew last week all homemade malts. This looks like a fun hobby. Jumping in with both feet.


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[Farside]

Be sure to post some pics!

I'm thinking about doing some practice maltings with some bought barley soon. It certainly makes sense.

On the growing front, do small berries result in small progeny?

For example, is it worth grading the seed for next season and discarding the small ones, or has it more to do with environmental factors than genetics?

Once I get to production size, these things will start to matter.

 

[drummstikk]

Sad news!

My field of bere was plowed under. This is the hazard of growing on a field you don't own.

I didn't plant all of my bere seed so I'm not wiped out, but it looks like my dream of a 100% homegrown beer will have to be postponed a bit.

 

[Farside]

Oh no! That really sucks!!

Is it too late to replant elsewhere?

 

[drummstikk]

I don't have access to any other fields.

 

[fifelee]

I don't have access to any other fields.

If you can get to Montana I lend you as many acres as you want.

 

[Farside]

Getting ready up North here to plant the spring barley. 3 varieties this year...

 

[CitizenCane]

Yes, that does really suck. I too will offer my assistance. We are about a month late for best planting date so the quality will not be the best but you can at least get your seed back for next fall. I am set up for planting small seed lots so I would only need a few pounds.It would go under water so a complete failure is unlikely.

Update on my stuff: I planted the 6th one out last Friday. The first 5 (planted between 4/10 and 4/19) are all up. About 400 sq/ft of 4 (Otis, Poppenhiem, Kitzing & Bavarian) and 900 sq/ft of 2 (Chevalier & Moravian). Not bad for getting 100 seeds last October. I still have 2 late ones yet to harvest in the green house. Probably wait till next year on those. Otter (winter type) is flowering now in the greenhouse.

 

[Farside]

Oh great. I'm about 80% through digging 500 sq feet of garden (burying organic matter) and find out the land owner is selling their land.

At least I haven't planted yet but it has poured cold water on my grow out operations for this summer.

 

[mlsuggs]

Spring updates from my end of the world:

I've got 32 sqft each of Halcyon & Maris Otter (winter varieties). I had been worried about winterkill, as they looked pretty sorry coming out of our unusually harsh winter; they seem to be bouncing back pretty well. Halcyon is starting to head (I can see the tips of the awns), and the MO looks to be about a week, maybe two behind it.

I've got 12 sqft of Bere, 4 sqft of Hana, and 28 sqft of Conlon (spring varieties). The Conlon and Hana are pretty well keeping pace with each other, while the Bere looks to be a few days behind it. They were sown on 7 April, and are all about 9" tall so far.

I've got 16 sqft of unidentified oats, a gift from a friend. They're keeping pace with the spring barley.

I have four varieties of hops growing, in a number of locations. I had put in rhizomes by my deck last year, but most of them died for a variety of reasons, and new rhizomes were put in this year. At the deck, I have: Willamette (new rhizomes sprouted, old rhizomes are already nearing 5' tall); Cascade (new rhizomes sprouted, only a couple of inches as yet); Magnum (new rhizomes sprouted, old rhizomes about 18" tall); and Sterling (new rhizomes sprouted). By a couple of old pear trees, I planted two four-year-old Cascade rhizomes; they're already up around 8' tall or so. I have a new Willamette coming up by the lone birch tree on the property, and it's about 8" tall. A new Magnum at the base of an old telephone pole is about 4".

<whew> Who knew 'watching plants grow' could take so much energy?

--Misha

 

[mlsuggs]

Be sure to post some pics!

I'm thinking about doing some practice maltings with some bought barley soon. It certainly makes sense.

On the growing front, do small berries result in small progeny?

For example, is it worth grading the seed for next season and discarding the small ones, or has it more to do with environmental factors than genetics?

Once I get to production size, these things will start to matter.

(tl;dr) In short, over time, yes, it matters.

(long answer) I was doing a bit of research a few years ago into something unrelated, and uncovered an interesting database of Russian tax records, dating from before the 14th century through the 19th century (earlier was spottier, later records were more complete).

The guy who put the records together noted something about the grain (usu. rye) harvest: The peasants would sort the harvest into three portions, based on berry size. The third with the largest berries would get sold on the market as food. The middle third would be kept for personal consumption. The third with the smallest berries would be re-seeded for the next year.

Over time, there was a definite trend of the harvests getting smaller and smaller, on a per-acre basis. There are lots of factors that can influence it: weather, pre- and post-harvest handling, crop predation, etc. But through the noise caused by those factors, the harvests were getting physically smaller; they were basically selecting for plants that provided smaller seed (berries).

The trend was obvious in as small as 20-year increments; less than that, and the "noise" tended to drown it out.

If you intend to do this as more than a hobby, I recommend arranging your selection differently than how they did theirs... I'd divide in two (or so); save the largest berries for re-planting, and use the smaller ones to malt. That's basically my plan, once I build up enough of a seed-stock to be able to support at least a couple of batches per year with homemade malt.

YMMV,
--Misha

 

[Farside]

Nice progress Misha.

FYI we have snow forecast this weekend up in the North so I think planting will be delayed this year.

The good news is that I've found an alternative growing area for my grains.

 

[Beer4ce]

here's my Harrington growing nicely. I had to fence it off so my sheep and goats would leave em alone! Planted a bit later than I wanted. I'm expecting 10lbs of grian, next round I'll fill the entire fenced are with barley. Should get me to 30-40lbs per harvest I hope. Cheers

 

[drummstikk]

View attachment 204214 here's my Harrington growing nicely.

Beautiful!!!

 

[Brewark]

I'm as green as your barley. I'm limited to two 3' x 5' plots for cereal. The wife refers to me as "old RickDonald" because I'm trying to "farm" in the back yard, rather than just "garden" some tomatoes, beans & peppers.

My rye from last winter is finally starting to dry out, so I'll put in my barleys in about two weeks. Best of luck w/the critters!

 

[Farside]

Hana and Golden Promise looking good this year.

 

[PapaBearJay]

Hana and Golden Promise looking good this year.

Growing 'Conlan' myself this year, looking forward to the harvest!


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[Farside]

I harvested 3/4 of the Golden Promise over the weekend, nice big fat kernels too. The rest needs a bit more time.

I'm thinking that I'll keep the harvest separated and see if the two sets of seed produce two different times to maturity. Ideally I want all the barley to be ready to harvest at the same time, not as it currently is.

If this variance can be bred out of my genetic line then I'll be a happy camper.

 

[mlsuggs]

I ended up with about 5.5 pounds from just shy of 64 sqft of M.O./Halcyon. My Hana was being grown up from 5g of seed, I got maybe 100g or so. And my Bere tripled in volume, up to about 150g. I'm tilling up a bit of field (probably about 600 sqft) for this year's winter barley, and everything else will be in my "experimental" 64 sqft bed again, and so on, until it outgrows it...

I bought some Conlon seed from Johnny's Select to practice malting; the first batch had a couple of hiccups, but the second batch was identifiably "pale malt." The first batch of beer from home-malted grain is fermenting (brewed Sunday, two days ago). In a year or two, I should be able to do an "estate beer," all grown and processed from my property. Woot!

Cheers!

--Misha

 

[Farside]

That's awesome! Keep up the good work.