As a keen gardener, one question that has always been present at the back of my mind has been ‘How feasible is it to grow a crop of wheat in the garden?’. Research into the subject would suggest that almost every household in Brittany grew enough wheat for their own personal use up until around 1700, and even into the 1900s the majority of small-scale farmers preferred to grow their own wheat, and bake their own bread, to being reliant upon the local baker.
This being the case, I decided a few years ago that the time had come to introduce wheat into my garden – and to try my hand at growing what must have been one of the first cultivated plants in the Western world.
I have now completed four years of growing the crop: I made some rudimentary mistakes in the first couple of years and, as a result, the yield was low – but I did still manage to harvest some grain. The crop has been better in 2010 and 2011, encouraging me to believe that I am moving in the right direction.
Here are some tips based on my experience so far:
Firstly: Wheat is not as difficult to grow as one might imagine: it is, essentially, a type of grass, and it wants to flower and produce seed. Obviously, it takes skill and understanding to consistently produce a crop large enough to live on – but on the other hand, any reasonably competent gardener should be able to harvest at least something from their wheat plants from year one.
Secondly: It does not take as much work as one might imagine. Most of us grew up on tales of the back-breaking work endured by peasants as they toiled in the fields from dawn till dusk each day, and yet still lived in poverty. My experience would suggest that these harsh conditions were not due to wheat being a difficult plant to grow – they were more likely to do with politics, questions of land ownership, rents, labour laws, and price-fixing.
Thirdly: It is assumed that wheat growing requires a lot of complex machinery and expense (a plough to break up the ground, chemical treatments to stop disease, and a combine harvester to bring in the crop) but this is not the case. Wheat cultivation started thousands of years ago, when people succeeded in bringing in large crops with the most rudimentary of tools – presumably made of stone or wood. Any gardener with a good selection of modern hand-tools should have no problem with this crop.
How Much Land?
You do not need a huge ten-acre field to feed a family with wheat. In Central Brittany, where I have my garden, it is reasonable to expect 100 to 150kg of grain from 500m2 of wheat. This can probably be increased with careful husbandry.
Preparing the Ground
As with all crops, proper preparation of the ground is the key to success: ideally, the soil should be rich in organic matter, and free from weeds – but one of the beauties of wheat is that it will grow almost anywhere. One of the big fallacies about wheat is that the ground has to be ploughed before it is sown. In most parts of the world, a simple hand-held hoe or mattock is the preferred tool for preparing the ground for wheat. If you were planning to grow enough wheat to feed dozens of people, then, yes, you would need a tractor and some heavy machinery, but if you are just going to grow enough for yourself, you will find it quite easy to work over a suitable area of ground by hand. This assumes, of course, that you are using an area of the garden that is already under cultivation: areas previously used for growing potatoes, for example, are suitable for wheat.
Sowing the Seed
Inexperienced wheat growers should sow the seed in drills (rather than broadcast): make a shallow drill with the side of the hoe, sprinkle the seed in the drill quite thickly, and then fill in the drill and tap the soil down with your foot.
Opinion varies as to when is the best time to sow the crop: in Brittany Autumn sowings are favoured; some people sow as early as September, whilst others wait until November. It is hard to see any disadvantages to early sowing if the size of the plot is modest.
Looking After the Plants
Once the seedlings have a few leaves, hoe in between the rows regularly. The more weeds you have, the more often you should hoe. In the Spring, hoeing has the advantage of not only reducing the weeds, but it also aids water retention by creating a dusty layer on the surface of the soil.
If you have not applied any artificial fertiliser to the crop, there should be no need to treat for fungal or insect attack. The crop will suffer some damage, but in an organic garden one would expect this to be limited to a relatively small number of plants.
Harvesting
The most effective way to harvest wheat is to cut one handful of the stalks at a time with a razor-sharp sickle. Remove any weeds, and stack and tie the wheat bundles, or sheaves. This may sound tedious, but it is actually good fun.
The aim is to do the harvest when the grain has fully dried out, but before it starts to drop onto the ground. It should be hard enough so that you cannot make a dent in it with your finger nail.
Threshing
The grain can be separated from the stalk by laying the cut wheat out on some smooth ground and trampling on it, or hitting it with a heavy stick. If you are growing a large amount of wheat, threshing is a big job that does require some form of mechanisation, but if you are just growing enough for yourself, it is something that can be done over the course of a couple of afternoons.
Winnowing
The threshed grain has to separated from the chaff and bits of straw before it can be used. The traditional way to do this is to throw it up into the air, and to let the wind carry away the chaff while the grain falls down to the ground (onto a suitably-placed sheet, so that you do not lose any grain).
Milling
The grain has to be ground into flour before it can be used. The network of owner-run watermills and windmills that existed across Europe in historical times has all but disappeared, and you will probably have to grind your wheat yourself. It is possible to buy both electric and hand operated flourmills for home use.
Benefits
One good reason to grow wheat is that it enhances the overall beauty of any garden, another is that it costs virtually nothing to grow – seed can be saved from one year to the next, and no special tools are required. Even more remarkable is the fact that a private wheat crop is completely untaxed, you are allowed to keep it all for yourself, no TVA, and it does not have to be declared on your income tax return.
Tim the Gardener
