Urban Farm Hub

Ok I don’t have quite this much land but one can dream!

People keep saying it’s all well and good to grow some nice veggies but to sustain life you need to have grains too.  Well this year I am launching Project Grain!

I grew some oats and flax a couple of years ago and had good success so I am going to to grow these and throw in some wheat for good measure.

Depending on the variety you can plant grain either in the fall or the spring.  Soil needs to drain well and be reasonably fertile.  Seeds can be broadcast and raked in or you can plant them the depth of the seed in rows.  If you have observant crows it might be a good idea to throw a bit of netting over the planted area or you may lose a lot of your seed.

Oats

I saved seed from the Terra Hulless oats I bought from Bellingham’s Uprising Seeds a couple years ago so will do a germination test and if the seeds are still strong I will plant one bed with these tasty oats.  This variety is easy to thresh and it looks pretty in dried arrangements. For spring oats, the earlier you can plant the better.  They like cool weather and don’t need lots of sun.  They were a staple crop in the Scottish Highlands for a good reason.  This variety of oats is great because a big issue with growing grain on a super small scale is that you don’t have the machinery to do things like roll the oats or crush them to remove the hulls.  Because of this it’s important to look for grains that are going to be easy to process without a lot of hassle.

Flax

I have had a fair amount of success with growing flax and like the lovely blue flowers so will plant this too.  We eat a lot of this in bread, smoothies and with a nice bowl of morning oatmeal.  This can be planted in early April.

Wheat

You can’t launch a grain project without wheat so I ordered a hard red spring wheat, Triticum aestivum, from Territorial Seeds. This will taste good and look good in dried arrangements.  It too can be planted out in early April.

I will keep you posted on how things go and more general grain information can be found here.