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Pfälzer Dinkel Spelt

Pfälzer Dinkel Spelt

This is one of the plants I have growing in my garden at the moment. Spelt is an old variety of wheat, and at least around here is becoming popular again for making breads. In this case, it’s a variety used for making the original German pretzels. I got these seeds from a fellow Seed Savers Exchange member, who lives in Pennsylvania and is of Pennsylvania Dutch/German decent.

Many people don’t think about growing wheat or related grains in their garden, but I think it’s a very under rated plant. Of course it’s probably not for people just starting to garden, and not the only thing you should grow. This is the kind of plant for after you are growing all the usual vegetables, and are looking for something a bit different.

Wheat is not just for making bread! Many nice dishes can be made with the wheat berries right off the plant, in addition wheat can be sprouted for salads. Of course flour mills can be purchased for home use, and you can make your own bread too.

There are many different kinds of wheat available, and since they are nearly completely inbreeding plants many different kinds can be grown next to each other, and saving your own seeds is as simple as collecting the seeds off the plants.

An important consideration when growing wheat is choosing one that is easy to thresh (separate the seeds from the plant), and spelt in particular has a very difficult to remove seed husk. Spelt is also a very perishable grain. I am growing spelt now, because I tried several other kinds of wheat but they all failed to germinate. So far the spelt is doing very well, but I may encounter difficulties when it comes to threshing it, and in the long run I may have to look for other grains to grow.

For some reason there is not a lot of published information about growing wheat like plants in the garden. There are two main pitfalls with these plants. First is the young plants are almost indistinguishable from grass, and grassy weeds can easily choke off your plants. Make sure you don’t plant it in an area where grass is a problem weed. The other pitfall is these plants use a lot of water, and if you plant them too densely they can consume water so fast that they simply use everything available and die.

The first year it’s a good idea to plant it in rows, with a spacing of about 30cm (1ft) and seeds planted about 2.5cm (1″) apart. After the first year, when you have saved enough seeds, you can try broadcasting the seeds into an open area of your garden. Plant the seeds about a month before the first frost in your area. The idea is it should establish itself before winter starts, grow slowly through the winter then grow faster in the spring for an early summer harvest. It can also be spring planted, and some varieties are more suited for fall or spring planting. Really, when it comes down to it, it’s not a lot different from growing grass, and is very easy.

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Garden Pictures

It seems like I don’t often post pictures from the garden, so here are a few. Here is the garlic with the straw:

Garlic and Straw

I planted nearly 80 different garlics, but not all of them seemed to have survived. I guess I have about 70 left.

In the background you can see the dike that keeps the garden dry. The garden is at about sea level, but the area would regularly flood if it weren’t for the dike. Because of this the ground is almost always at least a little wet, and usually the only time I have to water the garden is right after sowing seeds. For this reason, I have to pull back most of the straw in the spring from the garlic, or it will just stay too wet and rot. You can see some of this straw in the pile in the back.

Here’s a view from the dike:

Garden from Dike

The garden runs from the green structures, up to and along side the long brick barn. It’s not very clear from the picture, but the garden is surrounded by canals on three side; along the front where the black plastic is, the area in the middle of the picture that looks like dried grass and along the side where the two trees are.

You can see in the background most of the land in the area has been cleared for agriculture, to the left and right of the garden where it is grassy is owned by people who live in the area.

The land where my garden is used to be a very small dairy farm, but is now a vacation home.

I used to be able to use a house here regularly in the summer, but that’s not the case as much this year. This garden is also too far from my home in Amsterdam and I need to spend time on other things this year. I plan to scale down the garden and look for something closer to home, hopefully for next year.

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Tulips and Amsterdam

The bollenjongen (flower bulb guys) recently visited here.  They have an online business, as well as a blog, including some great pictures of my neighborhood in Amsterdam, the Jordaan!  Of course a blog like this would not be complete without pictures of flowers and bulb fields, and you will find these too, all really nicely done.

They also have a friend in Amsterdam who runs the Tulip Museum, a place I had never heard of before even though it’s just down the street.  I plan to go and have a look soon, it looks interesting. It’s funny how it takes someone living on the other side of the Atlantic to tell you about something so close by.

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New Blog!

It’s not often I get to announce a new blog that at least in part is mine! Together with Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil, we have created a new joint blog, Root Cause. Be sure to add it to your bookmarks and RSS feeds! Please visit now and have a look at our first post concerning Perennial Onions.

I don’t know about the future, but for now our emphasis is on things people do themselves. Many people have a blog they use to gather information, create a journal, have a platform in which to express their opinion, talk about products they like using or just to write about things they think are important. In the beginning at least, we are trying to offer something that is none of those things, but rather emphasizes things that people are doing themselves and want to talk about.

Rebsie and I are both gardeners, and plan to share with you what we are growing. In particular Rebsie is an amateur plant breeder, and will almost certainly be showing off some of her creations. I hope we can find people who are raising animals, farming, cooking, building things, working on self-sufficiency projects and anything else people do themselves. Of particular interest would be things of a heirloom or heritage nature, or things related to biodiversity.

Are you doing something that you would like to write about? Maybe you don’t want to go to the trouble of having your own blog, and would just like to write something one off? Maybe you have your own blog, but would like an excuse to post somewhere else as a way to promote it and interact with other bloggers? Whatever your reasons, if you would like to make a guest post on this new blog, please get in touch with us!