"The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live it":Growing Wheat

By John Seymour

On page 152 he says

Hard and Soft Wheat
"hard wheat grows only in fairly hot and dry climates, although there are some varieties that are fairly hard even if grown in colder climates. It is much beloved because it makes a spongy bread, full of holes. It holds more water than soft wheat, and a sack of it therefore makes more break. In temperate
climates, soft wheat grows more readily and makes magnificent bread: a dense bread, perhaps, not full of huge holes, not half water and wind, but bread such as medieval battles were won on.

Sowing
" Wheat grows best on heavy loam or even clay soil. You can grow it on light land, and you will get good-quality grain but a poor yield. It will also grow on very rich land, but it must have land in very good condition. In temperate climates, wheat-and it will be one of the varieties called winter
wheat-is often sown in the fall. Winter wheat grows quite fast in the fall, in the summer warmed soil, then lied dormant throughout the winter, to shoot up quickly in the spring and make an early crop. In the northern United States and Canada, where the winter is too severe, spring wheat is grown, and this is planted in the spring. It needs a good hot summer to ripen it, and will come to harvest much later than winter wheat. If you can grow winter wheat do so. You will get a heavier crop and an earlier harvest.

"I prefer to put winter wheat in very earl:even early in September, because it gets off to a quick start, beats the crows more effectively, and makes plenty of growth before the frosts set in. Frost may destroy the very young wheat by dislodging the soil around its roots. If the early sown wheat is then 'winter proud', as farmers say, meaning too long, graze it off with sheep/ Graze it off either in November or in February or March. This will do sheep good, and will also cause the wheat to tiller (put out several shoots), giving you a heavier crop. You can sow winter wheat in October and sometimes even in November. The later you sow winter wheat, the more seed you should use. "Spring wheat should be sown as early as you can get the land ready and you feel the soil is warm enough. I would not say before the beginning of March, although some sow in February. The earlier you sow, the more you will lose to crows, but the earlier you sow the better, wheat needs a long growing season.

"Wheat needs a fairly coarse seed bed--that is it is better to have the soil in small clods rather than fine powder. For fall-sown the seed bed should be even coarser than for spring sown. This is so that the clods will deflect the winter rain and prevent the seed from being washed out and the land becoming
chocolate pudding.

"So plow, if you have to plow, shallowly, and then do not work your land down too fine. In other words, do not cultivate or harrow it too much. Aim at a field of clods about as big as a small child's fist. If you are planting wheat after old grassland, plow carefully so as to invert the sod as completely as
you can, and then do not bring it up again. Disc the surface, if you have discs, or harrow it with a spring-tined harrow, or an ordinary harrow if you haven't got that. But do not harrow too much. Then drill or sow into that. The earlier you can plow the land before you put in the wheat, the better so as
to give the land a chance to settle.

"You can either drill wheat, at a rate of about three bushels of seed to the acre, or else broadcast it at about four bushels to the acre. Whichever way you do it, it is a good thing to harrow it after seeding and also to roll it-that is, if you don't think the rolling will break down the clods too much. If it is wet, don't roll it. Discing is quite good after broadcasting seed, but only do it once: if you do it twice, you will bring up the seed again."

Care of Growing Crop
"You can harrow wheat quite hard when it has started to come up but is not more than six inches tall. After you have harrowed it may look as if you have runied it, but you haven't. You will have killed several weeds but not the wheat, and the harrowing does good by opening up the surface of the ground. If frosts look as if they have lifted the surface of the ground in the early spring, you can roll, preferably with a ring roller, but only if the ground is pretty dry.

"Jethro Tull invented a seed drill and developed "horse hoe husbandry". His idea was to drill wheat and other cereals in rows 12 inches apart, and then keep the horse hoe going up and down between the rows. Very good results were achieved. The practice has been discontinued because developments in husbandry have enabled the farmer to clean his land, meaning free it from weeds more thoroughly. It is therefore not so necessary to weed the wheat. in any case good crop of what that "gets away" quickly will smother most weeds on reasonably clean land."