And Now For Something Completely Different..."

[GoDawgs]

Grains. Every year I grow a few "toys" in the garden and this year I wanted to experiment with some kind of grain that might could be used for emergency food and flour. So I turned to someone who has been experimenting with this kind of thing for a long time. Scott's hobby is now a seed business so I told him what I was looking for to see if he grew anything way up there in Michigan that would work way down here in Georgia. It had to withstand the summer heat and be useful with nothing more than simple threshing and winnowing. No mechanical gizmos needed.

He recommended two grains. One is a millet called Dragon's Claw (due to the shape of the seed heads) and a grain sorghum Ba Yi Qi. He said they make tasty porridge and I think he said one of the two can be ground into a flour. Anyway, I got some seeds of both and planted one 18' test row of each yesterday now that the soil is toasty so we'll see what happens.

Here's the Ba Yi Qi sorghum:
https://greatlakesstapleseeds.com/colle ... in-sorghum

...and the Dragon's Claw millet:
https://greatlakesstapleseeds.com/colle ... law-millet

This should be a fun experiment. It's different from anything I've ever done before so we'll see. I just hope the birds leave them alone!

[PlainJane]

Hope it works out!

[Dawn]

I've grown the bird seed millet, but I've never heard of the one you have, looks interesting!

[bower]

I'm trialing a bunch of wheats and some oats and barley this year. Will definitely want to see how your sorghum and millet do! These are sadly more likely to fail in my climate because of our tendency to frost, so I haven't tried em. Also dragging my feet on things like amaranth, quinoa and corn, which likewise are frost tender and have to be started indoors here and then planted out in the hopes of getting a long enough season.

[GoDawgs]

@Bower , you know, I do believe I did give amaranth a try. That was ages ago and was a one-timer. It looked pretty but the seed was really small and all buggy. I sure wouldn't eat it. LOL!

[bower]

Honestly @GoDawgs I opened a packet just a few days ago and sprinkled it on a small tray, and I exclaimed "That's not food! That's useless!" because it was so tiny. And then I fired some marigold seeds on top of em and covered them with another layer of mix. Definitely not worth growing to my mind, as a food. The little 'bird rice' that grows in my driveway is bigger than that - a lot bigger!

[rxkeith]

something that would be useful for me is being able to grow grain to feed my chickens.
organic feed is about $29.00 a 50 lb bag. we have the land to grow, 40 acres. it is under utilized right now.

maybe scott in michigan would be a good source of info?
go dawgs, can you provide a link to friend scott?


keith

[GoDawgs]

@rxkeith , here's the link to Great Lakes Staple Seeds. Right now they're done with spring orders until fall seeds are ready. Just tell him what you're looking for and for what purpose and if he will be having anything that fits that, he'll tell you.

https://greatlakesstapleseeds.com/

His contact info:

"For Questions / Comments please contact us at: Seeds(@)GreatLakesStapleSeeds(.)com. Remember to remove the brackets we have in place to defeat spam from the dreaded web-bots."

[bower]

@rxkeith I too am looking into chicken feed as well as human food applications. The price of organic feed here, which is all imported from off the island, is through the roof. The last time my friend had some birds, it cost her $20 per bird in feed alone. I know we can do better than that!

[Cole_Robbie]

@rxkeith I too am looking into chicken feed as well as human food applications. The price of organic feed here, which is all imported from off the island, is through the roof. The last time my friend had some birds, it cost her $20 per bird in feed alone. I know we can do better than that!

I have always wanted a meal worm farm.

[wykvlvr]

Wry grin I will be planting amaranth this year for the first time but I am growing it for the leaves not the seeds. Of course if my growing season is long enough and I like it I may be able to save seeds so I can grow it again.

[GoDawgs]

Both the millet and sorghum popped up two days ago so we're off and running.