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.
This is a great post: grain in the veggie garden!
I’m planning to grow grain amaranth this year, after trying it four years ago and ending up doing nothing with it (besides giving some for flower arrangements). Easy small-scale threshing was sticking point, although I didn’t really look into it, and I don’t know if amaranth is particularly difficult. Are you familiar with amaranth (grain version)? It has quite a little story, centuries ago it was kind of politically buried, something like that, besides, it’s a super-grain and tastes good, too.
It’ll be fun following your home grain experiment. I’ll pass on any threshing tips I find. There’s probably some interesting stuff from Fukuoka, his small scale, no-till system.
Hi Mike:
My first year at the garden I have now, I planted a wide variety of plants to get an idea of what would do best, and amaranth was one of the plants I tried. It didn’t do well, and I never looked into why. I remember one plant did grow nicely, and had a great red flower, but I never got any seeds. I’ll be interested in hearing how you get on with it. Maybe it’ll be worth my trying it again.
As far as threshing goes, Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds, BC, Canada uses a ‘threshing box’. A simple wooden box with slats screwed into the bottom. He uses it for many different kinds of plants. He uses it with his foot to break up the seed pods, then an air compressor to blow away the chaff. I haven’t yet had enough of anything to make building something like this worthwhile, but this will probably be my first step.
One of the problems I have with the spelt is removing the seed hulls. I was recently reading about using a modified Corona Grain Mill for this (at a cost of about US$40 for a small hand operated unit). On the same page is a suggestion for modifying a leaf shreder/wood chipper for threshing. I don’t know if it is worth it for you to go to the trouble to do this, but if you already have a wood chipper anyway, maybe it’s worth looking into:
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/LTRAS/itech/thresh.html
I’m looking forward to hearing how you decide to do your threshing!
I checked out the link, the grinder conversion thing sounds doable enough to try (it’s easy to make plans in winter and early spring, then the work hits…).
There’s an old sifting contraption in the barn that I took a look at today. I didn’t pull it out, I’ll wait for warmer weather, but it seems to be three horizontal screens stacked with a few inches of space between, and an electric motor. I think the motor shakes the screens and grain is sifted down through progressively smaller mesh. Could be useful.
Grain will be fun!