Just speculating, but I think it would be similar to growing beans for dried beans, which usually is not an economical use of garden resources and effort. The reason is that grain and beans are grown and processed on an industrial scale. It's difficult to compete with that on a garden scale.

It might be fun though. Most things I do as hobbies don't make economic sense.

Jim

If you really just want to grind your own grain, then find a friendly farmer who will sell you some of his. I think you'd be surprised at how much you could get for so little. Planting, cutting, and threshing a small patch of wheat would be labor intensive for the light yield you'd get out of it--IMO.

While growing wheat may not be the most economically prudent use of part of your garden space, it can be very useful as part of a rotation to aid in insect and disease suppression. I grow fall sown oats that do very well in my rotation but don't let them get seed developed on them before they are cut down.

Michael

Economically it is not worthed.
Second, wheat is a cold crop and should be planted in the fall to grow some top and over winter. Some gardners plant rye or wheat as cover crop over the winter and in the spring they till it in. The green is a good source of nitogen.

Yeah, I don't know in your zone if you would have much luck with hard red winter wheat(the kind most milled for flour) but you might grow some spring wheat. Wheat is a grain that responds well to growing in large fields, it does not compete well with weeds and needs to be grown thick so at harvest time it kind of supports each other and prevents lodging, if that makes sense. Most houses here in san diego set on what is considered 1/8 acre. If you planted that whole lot and got a bumper crop, you would have about 300 lbs of wheat. As mentioned above, it would not be worth it but might be fun. I'm thinking of growing a few stalks of broom corn this year for no other reason than I haven't seen any in real life for a good many years. Have fun . steve

I'm really no expert on chickens but you might be happier with, say 30 or 40 plants of milo(grain sorghum). It makes a nice big head, easy to harvest with a bypass pruner, and you could let the chickens do their own threshing..steve

I think the value for your bread making would be more in producing a specialty item, like sprouted wheat.

For the birds, you might consider growing millet. There are some nice ornamental varieties with purple seedheads and foliage. I haven't looked into the nutritional value of them, yet, but I'm sure the chickens would appreciate them. I also plan to interplant some forage for my chickens in my lawn (where I'm limited on what I can grow due to the septic field). The following is a list of commercially mixed seed for chicken foraging:

20% Common Flax, 5% Ladino Clover, 5% Birdsfoot Broadleaf Trefoil, 10% Non-dormant Alfalfa, 20% Red Cowpeas, and 40% Buckwheat.

I've experimented with pretty much every grain I've been able to get my hands on seeds of over the years. I too enjoy grinding my own flours and meals, and I do bake fairly regularly (probably 2 to 3 times a week).

Most grains aren't practical at all in terms of the yield for the area and work involved, but that doesn't mean that they aren't worth growing for the pleasure of learning about them, or for the pride in being able to say that the bread you're serving to someone is made from your own grain.

Wheat, oats, barley, rye, and some of the legumes (lentils and garbanzos come to mind) are actually among the least productive in terms of yield per area and work. The best grains and grain-like seeds, in terms of being practical for home cultivation, are flour/flint corns, amaranth, sorghum/milo.

FWIW, Bejay, I've been grinding flour at home from all kinds of things, including very hard kernels of flint corns, on a $15 sale-price at Target Black and Decker coffee mill with steel burrs and adjustable grind. It takes anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 minutes to make 2 cups of flour or meal, can produce anything from coarse meal to fine flour (although certain very hard grains like flint corns and brown rice need to go through twice for fine flour), and so far, using it probably twice a week, it's lasted about a year and a half. While perhaps not up to the level of a good quality home grain mill, it certainly has been a good and cost-effective way to go for me.

I've grown a small patch of Red Turkey Wheat for three years now. It grows extremely well here. I plant it in fall and harvest in June. However I have to say that my small patch would be doing good to produce enough wheat for a loaf of bread. Also, I have not come up with a practical way to thresh and winnow. Our corn (we grow two varieties of dent corn) is much more productive and practical for our situation.

George
Tahlequah, OK

George, this is kind of off topic, but what kink of corn do you grow? I'd like to grow a few stalks here in my tiny garden. as I mentioned before, I was thinking of planting a few hills of sorghum(broom corn) just for fun. It grew where I grew up in kansas as a weed in the sorghum grown for hay. It grew taller than the planted stuff, with a head that was messy and black. My dad said it was black amber, an old variety of broom corn. I would imagine it would have been volunteer believe it or not, from crops grown in the dust bowl days. And that was in the sixties! I don't know how it survived all those generations but it did. steve

stevesd -

I grew up on a farm in the Dakotas about the time of the dust bowl days. My uncle raised a lot of grains, and had animals, sort of self-sufficient farm. My thought when you mentioned corn that had a head "messy and black" brought to mind that there was occasional smut on the corn.

It wasn't too well thought of, however, I learned recently that maize "smut" is considered a delicacy in Mexico.

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

I grow two varieties; Mesquakie Indian Corn and Cherokee Squaw. Last summer it was Mesquakie Indian Corn, so this year it'll be Cherokee Squaw. We like both very much.

Below is a link to a thread with some pictures and discussion. If you do a search for "Corn for Meal & Grits" you can also find my first thread, which no longer updates when anyone posts on it.

George

Here is a link that might be useful: Corn for Meal & Grits II

I've found wheat, barley and rye to be fun and easy stuff to grow, but it's far from economical considering you can buy a 50lb sack of wheat very cheaply (try unmalted wheat at a beer brewing shop).

Grains will compete well with weeds if they are planted densely. Dense planting doesn't really hurt the harvest much, it just reduces the number of tillers each plant produces which is actually a good thing. Plants with lots of tillers will have their various heads mature over a longer period than a stand of plants with few to no tillers. That reduces lodging and shattering of under and overmature heads, respectively.

They also look pretty cool when the heads are up. Here we get free water in winter (rain) when these things grow, so they're kind of a freebie thing that I can throw in a plot and ignore until it's ready for harvest in June, at which point they can be followed by squash, okra and other fast heat lovers.

If you have chickens, you can thresh and winnow it crudely and let the birds pick over the leftovers. The more grain you thresh and the less efficiency you demand, the easier it is.

Though standard wheat is very cheap, home production of specialty wheat is more economical and more intereting. Things like kamut wheat, maris widgeon wheat, emmer wheat, ect are not commonly available (or several dollars/lb) and may look better in the garden since modern wheat has been bred to be relatively short. Some have fewer but larger grains, making them easier to process.