growing your own barley....

[LeftyRighty]

I’m asking about gardeners, not farmers. I’d like to try growing my own barley. I have a 800 to 1000 sq ft garden area, and looking at a 6-row winter strain barley, and won’t plant until this fall. This should yield enough grain for 4 or 5 5-gallon beer batches. I am an experienced gardener but have never tried growing grains.

Did some web searching: seeding rate is about 2 to 3 lbs per 1000 sq ft, or about 20 seeds per sq ft, and seed are recommended to be planted at a depth of 1 to 1 ½ inch. This is my concern - what is the best way to sow the seed. Plugging each individual seed into soil will be an excruciating back-breaking task. Even to trowel close spaced furrows seems excessive. I am thinking of just hand broadcasting the seed over a well-tilled soil, then raking the seed under. My concern is whether or not the seed will be too shallow, and the plants will not survive a cold winter. If anyone else has grown their own barley, how have you done this. I would also appreciate any other suggestions you may have on GYO.

 

[signpost]

I can't help, but I'm interested in hearing more as you attempt this, whether others chime in with advice or you just figure it out by trial and error.

 

[RM-MN]

If you get the barley seed covered and it stays damp for a few days it will sprout. Once sprouted the depth of the seed won't be of concern because it will have given all its nutrients to the sprouting effort and will be done. As long as the seed isn't planted too deep you will be fine. There is a limited amount of nutrients in the seed and if it is too deep it won't be able to reach the surface. It can probably make it up to 6" deep but that will stress it badly.

 

[plath]

Following. Can't wait to hear how it goes...


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[day_trippr]

Scatter the seed, then take a grass rake, flip it so the tines are up, and use the back side, gently running it over the seed...

Cheers!

 

[Cyclman]

James from BB has done it:

I wish I had the space. Also, it might be better to do specialty grains, that way conversion isn't such an issue and you can spread the grain against more batches. Reading "brewing lager beer" the technical requirements of brewing barley are very high.

Keep us up to date, I wish I had the space to do this!

 

[Puddlethumper]

How do you figure on malting the grain once it is harvested?

 

[LeftyRighty]

How do you figure on malting the grain once it is harvested?

my other hobby garden is growing tobacco. I've built a 'fermenter' used to advance the aging process after the tobacco has been cured. Got 5 years experience with it.
Specifically, it's an old upright freezer, vented, with electronic control of the heat source. The heat source is a crockpot, providing both heat and humidity for malting; or a dry crockpot for heat to dry the grain. I have not worked all the technical/practical bugs yet for malting, but am confident that I can make it work.
Yeah.....home grown beer and smokes....what a great life !

 

[GeneticBrew]

Scatter the seed by hand as evenly as you can over the area. Take a garden rake and lightly rake the area so the seed is covered by a thin layer of soil (about an inch).

A farmer would use a grain drill, which is more precise about seed depth, but it's also a mechanical machine that puts the seed into rows.

Smaller farmers may use a "spreader" which is a device with a hopper, a hand crank and a wheel which tosses the seed much like you do by hand.

The seed doesn't have to be planted in rows, it would look rather artificial if you tried to plant the seed by hand in rows, or with a one row garden seeder.

Think of barley as a grass, though I don't think you'd want to use a grass seeder as that would tear the seed.

Malting your own barley is relatively straight forward, but it's best to maintain cooler temperatures to get the best product. I'll refer you to Malts and Malting for a good overview of the process.

I've malted hundreds of pounds myself and while I can't maintain a precise environment, the resulting malt produces excellent beer.

 

[macs]

I've grown 6 row Barley before by just broadcasting it on the ground and raking lightly. It's not too picky and easy to grow. I didn't fertilize mine at all and it grew very well. I didn't brew with it though, I just fed it to my chickens. I grew it as an experiment just to get a feel for it. It's cheap so losing some to experimentation won't cost you an arm and a leg.

 

[Puddlethumper]

my other hobby garden is growing tobacco. I've built a 'fermenter' used to advance the aging process after the tobacco has been cured. Got 5 years experience with it.
Specifically, it's an old upright freezer, vented, with electronic control of the heat source. The heat source is a crockpot, providing both heat and humidity for malting; or a dry crockpot for heat to dry the grain. I have not worked all the technical/practical bugs yet for malting, but am confident that I can make it work.
Yeah.....home grown beer and smokes....what a great life !

Sounds like a great project. It should be interesting to follow along with you.

 

[PresqueIsleBrewer]

Barley is not like winter wheat you don't plant it in the fall. Its like oats you plant in the spring. In Michigan you plant in may and harvest in Aug.

 

[roastquake]

following

 

[westchesterBrewer]

Before you start growing your barley, it would be worth reading this article on Fusarium. I just took a malting class yesterday and a good portion of the class was spent talking about the disease and its impact on barley meant for malting in either brewing or distillation. The malt house ALWAYS sends a sample of their grain from the farmer for a test of the disease before accepting a grain shipment.

While you are doing a much smaller batch, I think it is still worth a read, especially if you get a batch grown and malted and wind up with a batch of gushing beer.

http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/bmg/gudmestad.html

Good luck! I hope you are successful with your endeavours!

 

[aryoung1980]

You've inspired me sir. I just ordered a pound of Robust barley seed. I'm hoping for ten pounds of 6-row come harvest time to make some pre-prohibition, Classic American pilsner.


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[LeftyRighty]

update on my progress....
Got an 1 oz Lacey barley seed packet from Sustainable Seed Co., grew it this spring, just finished harvesting it, got about one+ pound of good grain. I'll plant about half my garden with it next spring.
Also got 5# of Robust seed from Fedco. The other half of the garden.
So, next year is good. Both are spring-grown barley's.

One thing that has baffled me - the availability of barley strains is very limited or virtually unknown. I've only found maybe 1/2 dozen known strains that one can buy online. Most of seed offered is by commercial/farmer supply sources, and when you ask, they have no idea what strain it is. I don't buy into the "barley is barley, it all makes good brew". I understand that each strain is what's been developed for particular areas, based on climate, soil, insect and disease resistance. Most of the data available requires an AG or horticulture degree to understand.

From internet research, there are over 2,000 strains that have been grown in the USA. But to find info and sources is nearly impossible, let alone what would be good for home gardens, or paricular unique beers.

I did find that I can get seeds from NPGS/GRIN. http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/acc/acc_queries.html This is the national seed bank, who periodically regrow the accession to keep viable seed available, primarily for institutional, universities, or research facilities. While they will make seed available to individuals, it is very limited, and will be cut off if demand is excessive. I did get a 10 gram packet (~140 seeds) of Maris Otter (PI 410858). The original accession is from the UK, 1976. I figure it will take me about 3 years of successive growth to have enough seed for a good crop.

Oh, yeah, I know....I can buy malted barley for half of what it will probably cost to grow-my-own, then there is all the effort into planting, growing, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, drying, malting etc. But it is a "I did it my way" thingy, and I can truely say it is 100% home brew, in every way.

 

[flars]

Check with local sport shops. They may know some people that have seeders that are towed by an ATV for deer and turkey food plots.

 

[k1ngl1ves]

Hell Yeah!!! I wanna grow my own barley!!!


Oh wait...

I'm super lazy, and usually a bit drunk.

Never mind.

 

[atsorrento]

This is great information. Thank you for sharing. I recently started growing my own hops and this looks like my next endeavor.

 

[signpost]

Thanks partly to this thread, I'm looking at growing a little bit of barley this year. Are you planning on following up on what you planned to do to expand on what you grew last year?

As I am searching through that national seed bank site (and doing some other reading) I'm finding seed designated as forage-type, feed-type, and other things. I'm wondering if those designations matter at all for the home growing/malting/brewing that I plan on doing.

I first started looking at varieties that originated in or near Michigan, since that's where I'm looking to grow it. But I've got quite a few links to varieties saved to work from. Not sure how to narrow it down to strains that make sense for my purposes.

 

[signpost]

Well, I just planted some seed today. I might have planted it a bit too densely, but it'll be fine. The picture below shows a row about 50 ft. long and 2 ft. wide. So, it's about 100 sq. ft. and I planted a pound of seed in that space. This is really just a first experiment with growing barley, so if I screwed it up by planting it so densely, oh well.

This is in the community garden at my church, and the pastor also is a homebrewer. I'm excited to see how much grain we end up with from this. If it goes well, I may till up another area to dedicate to barley and leave the rows for other things that need to be organized that way.

 

[RM-MN]

That might be a little too densely planted. I would plant barley at about 100 pounds per acre or about 1/4 pound per 100 square feet. Planting that thick will reduce your yield so instead of getting a sack full you might only get 10 pounds back as the plants compete for nutrients and moisture with each other. It will still be an interesting experiment and you'll know better how much to plant next year to optimize the yield.

 

[signpost]

That might be a little too densely planted. I would plant barley at about 100 pounds per acre or about 1/4 pound per 100 square feet. Planting that thick will reduce your yield so instead of getting a sack full you might only get 10 pounds back as the plants compete for nutrients and moisture with each other. It will still be an interesting experiment and you'll know better how much to plant next year to optimize the yield.

Thanks for the advice. If I get 10 pounds at harvest time, I'll be happy. I'll save a pound or so to plant next year and then do my first experiments with malting the rest.

As I was going along the row, I noticed I was running out of seed faster than I expected. I should have slowed my rate of spreading seeds at that point, but I just kept going. I really only wanted to do that one row this time around anyway, so I would have just ended up with extra seed sitting around and taking up space if I had done the more correct rate.

 

[signpost]

I decided to start another thread with a bunch of pictures of my container that I'm growing some Norwind 6-row in.

I just didn't want to completely hi-jack this thread. Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[LeftyRighty]

Had a pretty decent barley crop going this spring.
This is what it looked like a couple weeks ago.

Mother nature has not been kind - wind and rain has flattened most of the crop.

 

[signpost]

Double wow. 1 - that's a lot of barley. 2 - that sucks that so much of it has been flattened.

A youtube video I watched a while ago showed that same problem and the guy basically stood it up and loosely tied it together in bunches, so it would stay standing and rodents wouldn't eat up the kernels of grain.

Are you going to try to do something to save it or just see what yield you get from it as is?

 

[LeftyRighty]

It's official - my barley crop is kaput, period. Only thing to do now is let it lay until grain's ripen, try to gather enough grain spikes for seeding next year.

Way too much rain this year. There were only 4 dry days in the month of May, and none so far in June. Initially, I thought winds were knocking them down, now conclude that it's just heavy rain, too much, too often. Last night's 2-inch downpour flattened what little was still standing.

 

[RM-MN]

It's official - my barley crop is kaput, period. Only thing to do now is let it lay until grain's ripen, try to gather enough grain spikes for seeding next year.

Way too much rain this year. There were only 4 dry days in the month of May, and none so far in June. Initially, I thought winds were knocking them down, now conclude that it's just heavy rain, too much, too often. Last night's 2-inch downpour flattened what little was still standing.

I'm not so sure your crop is all that bad. You should see the fields of barley in the eastern area of the Red River Valley of the North. You might see 30 acres of a 40 acre field laying flat like that. They still harvest it.:rockin:

 

[LeftyRighty]

Hopefully, you are correct....will know in a few weeks.

I have one small plot, about 3 x4 ft, that's fenced with 3-ft high chicken-wire. I've grown barley in this for 2 years, to produce seed for a larger plot - about half of the big barley plot came from this.

The barley in this small fenced area may lay to one side, against the fence, but always stands back up after a few days. I may try growing about half next year's crop, all fenced in small sections. It might be a PITA to plant, but if it's worth the effort....

Then, again, this may just be an unusually bad weather year, and the next decade will be ideal.

 

[drummstikk]

It's official - my barley crop is kaput, period.

Your barley is only lodged. The condition can reduce yield, but when it happened to me, I didn't even notice a problem. The plants will bend back up toward the sun.

I covered lodging, along with many of the other questions in this thread (seeding rate, broadcasting vs. drilling, winter vs. spring barley, malting, over at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=287146

Hope it can be helpful! I really wish I had dedicated space to grow a crop of barley every year.

Oh, make sure to get some help for harvesting and threshing. By far it's the hardest part, but also the most fun. You'll feel like a real farmer when you're standing in a hot field for 6 hours pounding straw with a PVC pipe!

I also wrote an article about malting at home in the Jan-Feb 2013 issue of Brew your Own that hopefully clears up a lot of the common myths. If you don't have access to it, I can PM it to you when the time comes. Good LUCK!