Planting Day - Supplemental

I harvested what is probably the last of the red, summer wheat today. There is still a little bit of green wheat out there, but I’m expecting the birds to eat it before its mature enough to harvest. We’ll see.

The total is 4.5 ounces of wheat out of 115 sq. feet of garden. So if we follow the math out we get:
1 pound = 16 oz. which would need a garden 3.55 times larger = 409 sq. feet
1 acre = 43,560 sq. feet which would produce 106.5 lbs

These number might be quite a bit off, since we’re dealing with quite a small sample and projecting those numbers very big.

According to Neolithic Farming in Central Europe: An Archaeobotanical Study of Crop Husbandry Practices a person needs about 660 lbs. (300 kg) of wheat/year or 3300 lbs. (150 kg) for a family of five. That would be 6.2 acres / person or 31 acres for the family.

Which says to me that my yield was pretty low, which is hardly surprising considering my lack of skill, the patch of the garden (maybe one-fifth of it) that didn’t grow anything, probably because it was under the tree, and the poor weather for the season.

Neolithic Farming figures that yields of 300 kg/hectare (2.47 acres) were well within reason for pre-historic Europe.

All in all I’m very pleased and ready to try again and see if I can do better.