Wheat is sometimes called the staff of life, although this is incorrect. The Staff of life is actully bread. Bread is typiclly made from wheat, which is where the confusion arrises, I beleive.
Whatever...
Wheat is easy to plant, simple to grow and a bitch to harvest. So if you don't have a combine a thresher, and 40 acres to grow wheat on I suggest you plant just enough to meet your needs and plan on a day or two of rough work in the fall.
All that being said Wheat is actully fun to grow. Here is what you need to know about planing it.
There are two types of wheat. Winter Wheat and Spring Wheat. I've read all the books I could find, reasearched it on the internet, and ask what experts I could contact and have never come up with an answer as to what the differance is. The obvious answer is that one is planted in the fall and goes dormant in the winter then gets a good head start in the spring. The other is planted in the spring. As far as I can find out there is no genetic difference in the wheat it's self, it's just a way of describing the wheat based on a planting situation.
There are a bunch of verieties of wheat, Hard red, Hard white, Soft Red, Soft White, etc. You'll need to make you own decisions on that. I'm just planting what I bought from an organic farmer in the area. I beleive it is Hard Red (and a winter wheat crop.).
Wheat needs a lot of water so where ever you plant it you need to be able to get water to it in the quantity of about 50 gallons a week for every 100 sqft. (that's a 10 by 10 area). You will need to water until the wheat stalks turn golden and the grain starts to harden.
I use a fertilizer spreader to spread my wheat seed. It works well if you can get it to spread the seed at a rate of about 1 seed every square inch (sqin.) Or if you math it out 144 seeds every sqft.
I took the time to count out some seeds to get an average number per 1/8th cup, then I did a little simple math and rounded things up to even numbers. Here are my results.
1/8th cup = .125 cup (.125c) = 600 seeds (600s) = 4sqft.
again
.125c = 600s = 4sqft.
1c = 4800s = 32sqft (or an area about 5.5 feet by 5.5 feet)
3.12c (3 1/8th cup) = 15000s = 100sqft. (a 10 by 10 area)
16c (1 gallon) = 76800s = 512sqft. (or an area about 22.5 feet by 22.5 feet)
That should give you an idea of how much seed you need to plant whatever area you want to plant.
Now how much wheat do you what?
On average 3 cups of wheat make 3 cups of flour. 3 cups of flour makes a 1 pound loaf of bread. So if you want a loaf of bread a week for a year you need 156 cups of wheat. As far as I can tell you get a ratio of 10 to 1 or so when you plant wheat. So for every cup you plant you get 10 cups back. In a really good year you might get 12.
So, 16 cups of wheat (1 gallon) will give you bread for a year. That's a 512sqft plot, or about 23 feet on a side. Not a lot of area really, when you get right down to it. You could plant that much along the side of your house 35 feet long by 15 feet wide. But remember to keep a gallon of seed for next years planting. No reason you should ever need to buy wheat (or flour) again.
When to plant?
Winter wheat needs to go in sometime in the fall. Before it gets too cold at night. You want to plant it and water it until it starts to come up. It will look a lot like grass (which is what it is) If you see it starting to bolt (or send up stalks) you can mow it short and it wont hurt it (is what I'm told) or you can let animals graze on it lightly. Your timing isn't critical. You just want it well established before the ground freezes solid. Once that happens the wheat will go dormant and come back in early spring.
If your ground never really freezes in the winter you should just plant in early spring, once the ground is workable. That's Spring wheat.
Either way you just plant it like grass. Cast it at about 1 seed per sqin. and then cover it lightly with soil, either by raking over it, dragging, or lightly tilling it in. You don't want your seed to be deeper than about an inch and a half. You do need to water it really well for the first week, until you see it coming up. Then back off to 50 gallons a week per 100sqft.
That's it for planting. The big commercial farmer will tell you that every little element is super critical, and will say that this simplified method wont produce a good crop, but it will. It wont give you the most wheat you could hope for in the area you are planting, but then again you aren't a commercial grower. It will give you a lot of wheat for a little work. Spread seed, add water, wait. Couldn't be simpler. You have better things to do with your time. The commercial guys
have nothing better to do. It's their job to get as much out of the ground as possible. You and me? We just want some bread out of the ground.
In a later post I will describe the different ways to process your wheat. Cutting, threshing, and grinding all need to be done. but that's later.
-dale
