Information on Growing and Processing Your Own Grains

Loki · Expert Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 1298 Location: Cascadia

I've been poking around for info on small-scale grain cultivation and hand processing, but I haven't been able to find all that much. Anyone have any good sources for how to grow and process grains by hand? Or better yet, first-hand experience with oats, wheat, field corn, quinoa, etc.?

Here are some sources I've found on growing grain in the garden:

PO.com thread

Grain in the Garden (PDF)

Growing and Harvesting Wheat by Hand

A short account of grains in Rodale's Encyclopedia

The quinoa growing experiment

Grow Your Own Quinoa

Small-Scale Grain Raising (out of print and expensive)

I'm considering leasing a bit of farmland and would like to experiment with wheat, oats, field corn, and quinoa, and maybe dryland rice. I'm sure I can figure out how to grow them, but I think processing would be the most daunting part. Not sure they'd be worth growing if I don't have the time or energy to process them.
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Shannymara

pedalling_faster · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 10, 2005 Posts: 947

i'm growing wheat, rice, & corn in a community garden.

but i don't know much about it !

i did a test sprout with the wheat. one batch of seeds in the freezer, one that got no freezing. (Freezing helps some seeds in terms of viability).

anyway, the batch of seeds that i didn't do the freezing on sprouted AOK.

i'm not sure when to harvest the wheat. before the birds get them ? while the plant looks alive but aging ?

Rice Farmer at Mike Ruppert's blog is a great source of farming information.
http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

for the source of the rice plants' seeds, i used a bag of mixed wild rice from the organic food section.

for the corn, i bought "starts", baby plants. i'd rather start my own but the community garden where i'm growing didn't really start till the end of June.
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1762

Corn is the most practical of the grains for small scale for several reasons, assuming you have enough area to make it worthwhile. It can be planted in practical quantities by hand, the same way you would plant beans in rows, the harvesting is comparatively easier than wheat, oats, etc., and the equipment needed is minimal.

Starting with yields, the US national average for farm raised corn is around 160 bushels per acre, an acre is 43,560 square feet, and a bushel of corn weighs 56 lbs. That boils down to .2 lb./sq. ft., so a small garden patch of say, 20 ft. x 25 ft. would yield about 100 lbs. of corn, a reasonable amount for a household. Bear in mind that this yield depends on hybrid seed, and heavy fertilization, along with a good year for moisture. For open pollinated varieties and good soil with a heavy dose of poultry manure for nitrogen, figure about half that much yield.

Plant corn seed directly in the plot about the time of last frost in your area, preferrably having tilled the ground the previous Fall, and, if not chemically fertilized, use ground that had a nitrogen-fixing legume in it the previous year, such as beans or alfalfa, plowed under after harvest. Corn may even get frostbit a little and go on to make a good crop. For top yields, reseeding a frost killed crop is better than waiting too late to plant, however, a wet spring can cause seed to rot in the ground. You pays yer nickel and takes yer chances.

Crop care through the summer is minimal. Just keep the weeds out that would compete for water and nutrients and cause lower yields. Moisture in the grain must be as low as possible for storage. Wait until the stalks are bone dry, and the grain is hard and brittle befor harvesting, typically around the end of October in the Corn Belt, assuming no use of fossil-fuled grain-drying equipment. Break ears off close to the end of the shucks, and they can be stored as-is in any rain tight, somewhat ventilated place. If indoor space is at a premium, an old wood pallet with the top covered solid with boards, and a circle of 2" x4" mesh rabbit wire fencing erected on it like a tomato cage, can store ear corn outdoors, with only a cheap tarp on top to keep the rain off. It can stay in there all winter, if you like, removing what you want as needed, just keep it dry. Mice will get some, but that's why you have cats, right?

Shelling the grain off the cob is the most difficult part for the small grain raiser. It is necessary to remove the shucks, or at least peel them back to expose the ear before shelling, although some shellers claim to remove shucks, I haven't found that to be satisfactory.

There are myriad varieties of hand corn shellers made over the past 100 years or more, but the most practical are the small cast iron variety that clamps on or bolts to a wood box. They have a crank that operates the mechanism, one ear at a time is fed through from the top, and shelled grain and the empty cob come out the bottom in a pile. You can try your luck with Ebay for an antique model, but the antique collectors have discovered them and the price is up around $50+ for a very worn old one. I'd prefer a new one from:

C S Bell Co.

They also make VERY durable grain grinders. We have one of their 6" burr mills (the smallest) that has been used every week for pushing 30 years to grind our chicken feed and whole wheat flour. We bought the mill bare, and I installed a 1 1/2 HP electric motor to power it, the one chore I refuse to do by crank power if there is ANY alternative. Yes, they are pricey. If you want to mill grain, there aren't many options that cost less in the long term, particularly if you are going to grind any significant amount of grain, as in feeding 6 chickens, 4 people, and maybe some for dog food. Before you buy, try a cranked mill first, and grind 10 pounds of corn meal with it, then decide.

Corn may be shelled and stored in sealed buckets, etc., but for any large quantity, that gets expensive, and risks molding from too high moisture content, a problem largely avoided by storing on the ear, especially if the ears are shucked before storing.

We will have a crop in the ground next spring for the 6 chickens and us. Oh, sweet corn that got past its' prime should be left on the stalk to dry fully, as above. It makes GREAT cornbread!
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1762

Guess I should have told about planting. Similiar to beans, but corn can be a bit deeper, say 1 1/2". Plant in rows 24" to 36" apart to make cultivation and hoeing easier, with plant spacing a close as 6", to achieve a plant population of around 20,000 to 24,000 per acre, or about 2 sq. ft. per plant. Narrow rows and wider plant spacing is better to optimize use of rainfall. We like 30" rows, and 8 to 10 inces between plants, which allows the cultivator to get through.
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coyote

I know quite little about growing grain, but I will definitely be trying sorghum next year. Why? This summer in an unused corner of our new plot, a scrappy little corn-like plant fought its way up and started producing. I found out from a neighbor that it is sorghum. I have watered it exactly *twice* this entire year. We live in a pretty dry climate, but it still has managed to produce some grain, with virtually no care all year. Seems like a good one for a drought crop. Next year I'm planting.
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rattleshirt · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 118

I grew corn, spring rye, wheat, and barley in the garden this year. Our super wet spring basically ruined the crop of rye although I got enough to replant next year...I hope. The barley needed better soil with more lime I think. The wheat was a dryland variety and the rain wiped it out. My corn did reasonable well, the Oaxacan Green Dent had some knocked over by the wind and the Tohono O'odham 60-day took a lot more than 60 days and got rust and both have some insect damage to the mature kernals but they both produced about 3 cups of good seedcorn and another 1 1/2 cups damaged kernal I will grind up. Each type had about 20 plants. This is my first year with these varieties and I will be planting roughly 20 varieties next year.
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rattleshirt · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 118

Oh, I also grew quinoa...I am not sure how it did just yet.
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kjmclark · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 09, 2005 Posts: 326

kjmclark · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 09, 2005 Posts: 326

hardtootell

IMHO-I really think grain growing will be a worthwhile pursuit. Even if it is only on a couple of acres. It could supply biofuels and animal feed as well. I tend to think of that as a cash crop extra I'd want to have access to above and beyond my efforts at subsistance farming.
I suggest looking for NON- hybrid heritage varieties as these will breed true. I am also a huge fan of getting as many varieities going as possible to see what could work on your land. I think the principles of crop rotation, green manuring and good soil/water management will help alot.
Good Luck all

Loki · Expert Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 1298 Location: Cascadia

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1762

Loki,

Yes, generally you should shuck the corn before storing, but you don't have to if time is pressing at harvest. You can just snap it off the stalk and toss it in a pile as you walk down the row, gather the piles later to be hauled to your "crib" in buckets, on a sled pulled by a draft animal (sleds don't roll off down hillsides), or onto truck or farm wagon, depending on the scale of your operation.

Pioneers in the Midwest US had "husking bees", a community gathering to shuck corn later in the winter when there was more time for it. Ear corn can be fed directly to horses, mules,hogs, and cattle, but they are wasteful, spilling a lot of it on the ground. The old farmers' answer was to let the chickens run loose to pick up the dropped grain. Literally, they fed corn to a cow, let a pig subsist on the spilled and undigested corn in the cow manure, and a chicken followed the hog. Only feed the cow, and also get a pig and a chicken----but rather poor ones at that. This became de riguer, among the thrifty German farmers who settled in the Ohio River valley in the early 1800's. Another was "hogging down" corn, where a small patch was planted just for hog feed, and a suitable number of young pigs with their sow were turned into the corn patch when it was mature, to harvest the corn themselves. Result was some fat hogs for late winter butchering with little labor involved.

The problem above was the severe labor of shelling and grinding the corn, for which there were few solutions 150 or more years ago. As mechanical shellers and grinding machines became available, the practice ceased.

During the 1930's, people living near towns often kept chickens and maybe a pig or two if they had enough ground to grow the feed. Hand corn shellers were used, or corn fed on the ear to pigs. Chickens, however, can't "chew" the corn grains adequately in their crops (they ingest small bits of gravel and such and the muscular crop squishes it all into a paste they can digest), so "cracked corn" was fed to chickens. The small holder would take a few bushels of corn to a feed mill to be coarsely ground, or "cracked", but a few had a burr mill, some hand cranked and sold for the purpose. Adjusting the burr mill to a more tight setting made it harder to crank, but produced cornmeal for kitchen use. C S Bell used to make one of those, but haven't seen it lately. They show up at auctions here, but rarely.

We plan to grow corn for our own batch of 25 chicks we will raise to fryer size and kill the roosters. The remaining pullets will be allowed to grow till they start laying, and when we can tell which ones are laying the best, the rest go to the freezer, leaving the 4 to 6 we want to keep for layers. Old plan, works good. Chicks come mail order in a vented box, shipped from the hatchery in Missouri.

McMurry Homepage, and catalog
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cynthia · Heavy Crude Joined: May 29, 2005 Posts: 382

Loki, found this on the front page of Portland.indymedia:
http://portland.indymedia.org/
Hope there is something useful there.
cynthia

Loki · Expert Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 1298 Location: Cascadia