Planting Wheat - Weeding (6 weeks+)

I spent an hour and half weeding the rest of the plot. It’s not the most fun I’ve ever had, but it has a certain charm that is growing on me -- assuming the weather is right. It could be hard on the knees (but I have knees pads) and it could be hard on the back (less so if it was planted properly in rows).

One thing it did give me was a very close-up look at what is happening at the ground level. There are spots where seeds just didn’t germinate. I can still see the seeds lying there on the soil. There are spots where they grew quite well and taller than in other areas. I have no idea how to explain the difference nor did I see any patterns.

Here’s a picture of the garden (compare it to yesterday’s pictures):



All of the green visible in this picture is wheat.

And here is a patch that grew well:

Planting Wheat - 6 weeks in

I just got back from the medieval congress at Kalamazoo. It was a fun time, an educational time and an exhausting time. I met good people (though not as many as I wanted to) and I can’t wait to go again, although that night not be for a few years if my daughter really does go to Germany as an exchange student.

If anyone is interested in my experience at Kzoo 2009, it can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It’s mostly not about living history, so I didn’t feel like I should post directly here. Over the next few days though, I should get the specifically food, mead and daily life bits and post about them here.

I also visited my parents who live in an RV but who spend some of their summer visiting my aunt in rural Indiana. There I got to see mile after mile of corn fields (maize, that is), still filled with the stubble of last year’s harvest. I was told it was still too wet to plow and plant this year.

But that means that I haven’t even looked at my own wheat field in two whole weeks, and what a lot has happened in those days!



The weeds have taken over! The wheat is still there but definitely needs help. I spent nearly an hour today pulling them out, and that is a pretty tedious job. I did about a third of it in that hour and the results are obvious.



My little planter of winter wheat has really taken off. The picture's not great, but these stalks are now over a foot long.



I’m going out right after this to finish up since it is supposed to rain this evening.

Medieval Bread Recipes On-Line

History.uk Recipes

Frequently Asked Questions about Medieval Bread
I like this one. It has several translations of period (late period) recipes.

CeltNet Recipes

A Short Note of Medieval Bread

Medieval Bread Baking

Serendipity

I just got an email from Bountiful Gardens advertising some of their new items up for sale. Among them was this book:

Booklet #33: Grow Your Own Grains by Carol Cox, 2008, 28 pp

Ecology Action Research Papers,

At last! Basic grain raising and harvesting on a small scale, appropriate for a home garden. How to grow and use barley, oats, cereal rye, triticale, wheat, amaranth, corn, millet, quinoa, rice, sorghum and teff. Carol Cox is the Garden Manager at our Ecology Action Research Mini-Farm in Willits, and has been growing all kinds of grains for many years. A working paper.

I think I’ll put in an order for that one . . .

Planting Day, 2 weeks later

I have shoots!



The weeding has gotten more difficult now since I can’t reach across the garden to reach all of the weeds I need to get to without trodding in the garden. But I don’t want to step on my nice little sprouts, so I’m treading carefully, leaning farther out than I should and straining my back in interesting and unexpected ways. Planting in orderly rows with paths between them definitely has its merits!

One thing I do notice is that there are some patches that are putting up a high density of little shoots, and there are other patches that seem devoid of wheat. I am very curious to know whether this represents poor sowing or some other effect. Maybe some patches are growing faster than others due to light or soil? Maybe some areas got more water than other? Unlikely that one. But I’m curious.