Grains Growing
Harvest backyard crops to make tasty treats in the kitchen
Hard-core gardeners have already started planning for their spring gardens in the Houston area. After all, it’s almost the end of January, and the time is now to start seeds for tomatoes and other such garden staples.
Here’s something to consider for this coming year: growing grains.
Before you envision rolling plains of wheat, we must be clear: wheat won’t really work here in subtropical zone 9. Of the grains that do work, you need lots of space — like, acres — to get a significant yield. So, home gardeners must have modest expectations.
There’s still a good reason to try growing a grain variety or two, even if you have only one raised bed in your yard to devote to them.
“Learning about how our major food crops are grown, what they look like and the joy of seeing them growing” is a major benefit to growing backyard grains, says Betsy Bruneau, manager at Bountiful Gardens Seed Co., a nonprofit that sells non-genetically engineered seeds of hundreds of plants, including many grains. “For some, like amaranth, you can grow enough to have for breakfast as a hot cereal, as a side dish for dinner, in a casserole, as an addition to baked goods or for use in salad. Amaranth can even be ‘popped’ for a snack. Wheat berries can be cooked and added to salads, sorghum can be ground into gluten-free flour, and so on. Many folks think if they can’t grow enough to bake a lot of bread, it’s not worth it ... but grains can be used in so many other ways.”
Additionally, a few of the grain crops that do well here are big attracters for birds and bees. “Most grains would attract birds to the yard,” says Keenan Hooper, a farm manager for Edible Earth Resources who is working on a gardening project in Sugar Land. He grew up north of Lubbock on a sorghum farm with thousands of acres and has also grown amaranth in a garden setting around here. “The amaranth flowers are an
amazing bee attracter — very brightly colored — some red, some golden, some have variegated leaves that are gorgeous. This is definitely an ornamental plant.” So, even if you don’t grow enough grain to eat, your plants will attract beautiful and helpful animal friends to your garden.
Here are the easiest grains to start with for gardeners who want to give grains a shot this year:
Amaranth
Amaranthus spp. is the cultivated form of pigweed, a wild plant most Texans consider a weed. Texas has about 20 varieties of wild pigweed and they grow out of sidewalk cracks, on roadsides, along fences, and, well, everywhere. The name “amaranth” is used for the domesticated forms of this plant, which trace back some 8,500 years to the native people of Central and South America, including the Aztecs, who valued it as much as corn. Spanish conquerors suppressed the growing of amaranth for centuries, but now large-scale farming of amaranth has returned worldwide because people have rediscovered its health benefits: Its seeds and leaves, both of which are edible, have lots of vitamins A and C, as well as iron and calcium.
Amaranth likes hot weather and doesn’t require pristine soil or fertilization. “Amaranth doesn’t require much additional feeding at all,” Hooper says. “I’ve seen it grow to 7 feet without anything added to an average soil.” About 15 plants of the grain variety (not the variety grown for their spinachlike leaves) will produce about a pound of seeds, he says, and will be ready to harvest in about 80-120 days, depending on the variety.
The plants grow tall to several feet, have oval alternating leaves and produce several seed clusters at the top with tiny black seeds. When the clusters lean over, they are ready to harvest. The most common mistake home gardeners make when growing grains is harvesting before the grain is ripe, Bruneau says. “If you take a few grains from the plant and try to bite into them, they should be hard, not soft at all,” she says.
Amaranth seeds are some of the easiest to harvest. They simply fall from the stalk and their hulls are already mostly separated from the seeds. You winnow the seeds from the chaff by simply blowing the hulls away with your breath or a low fan. Or winnow outside on a breezy day by pouring the seeds back and forth between two bowls.
Another option is to simply grow amaranth as a striking ornamental for you and as an attractor for the birds and bees.
Sorghum (milo)
Many thousands of acres of sorghum, also called milo, are under cultivation within a two-hour drive, in all directions, of downtown Houston, so it’s clear that it grows well in our climate. Sorghum is grown mostly for grain production in the United States, although some operations grow it for syrup. Like amaranth, with different varieties for seeds or leaves, sorghum varieties tend toward seed or syrup.
Sorghum probably came to North America from Africa, where it’s been a staple grain for over 4,000 years. It does well in hot climates and is drought resistant. Here in the U.S., it is mostly grown as livestock feed, but people of the “glutenfree” mindset appreciate it as a nutritious whole grain with lots to offer. It can be ground into flour, popped like popcorn, or cooked like a risotto. If you don’t want to eat it, you can make your own birdseed with it, or leave it on the seed stalks and use it for ornamental fall wreaths or other decoration.
Sorghum looks like corn when it grows, and it’s in the grass family, so it requires good nitrogen to thrive. Some varieties are hip high, others are head high. The seed clusters at the top will go through a milky stage, during which you can squash the seeds between your fingers and white sap comes out. Leave them on the stalk until they turn rusty brown, then harvest. Cut the seed stalks off, lay them out on a sheet or tarp and hit them with a stick to get the seeds off the stalks. Or just roll each stalk between your hands to get the seeds off. Winnow the seeds in bowls in front of a fan to separate the hulls and chaff. You can place the seeds into the oven on a cookie sheet at 170 degrees for a few hours to make sure they are dry. Grind them into flour with your coffee grinder or food processor, or save them in the freezer for grinding, popping or cooking later.
Sorghum offers the larger yield for the space than amaranth simply because the seeds are larger. A 50-square-foot raised bed with 20 or so plants can yield 3 to 5 pounds of seed. In our area, you can plant two crops — in April and in July — and you can grind the spent stalks into mulch, or bury them in your garden under compost and other organic matter to add nutrients to your soil.
Again, if you don’t want to eat the sorghum, leave it on the plants for the birds to enjoy, or harvest the seed stalks to offer when the winter sets in and the birds flock to your feeders.
Corn
Many people don’t think of corn as a grain, but it’s a grass, like sorghum, and is grown as a grain in millions of acres worldwide. Grain varieties are often called “dent” or “flint” corn and are used for livestock feed as well as for grinding into flour and cornmeal. “Sweet” varieties of corn are grown to eat on the cob and are harvested when the kernals are in their milky, soft stage.
Corn plants, like sorghum, need a nutrient-rich soil and can be planted relatively close together as long as the soil is good. Choose a grain variety instead of sweet variety. Grain corn is harvested a few weeks later than sweet corn, when the kernals are past the soft stage and have dried and grown hard. The kernals then can be stripped from the cob — simply grab the cob tightly and wring your hand around the kernals until they loosen and fall into a bowl. Use them in whatever ways you desire. Store in a jar for popping, or grind in small batches for polenta or grits, or do even finer grinds for cornmeal or corn flour.