GROWING GRAINS By: John Vivian

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So yield per plant is measured in dry ounces, not fluid pounds. And the land area needed to grow a substantial crop is measured in acres, not square feet. You should get 30 or more bushels of clean grain per acre threshed to free it from stalks and outer husks and winnowed to blow away the chaff.

Each bushel of whole grain wheat weighs 60 pounds and nearly all of it is converted to food if milled whole. That's the better part of 2,000 pounds or a short ton of grain per acre.

An acre comprises 43,000 square feet in area the equivalent of 43 approximately 30' x 30' hand-tended backyard garden plots. If you till up a new garden sized plot and plant it to winter wheat this fall, you will harvest 1/43 of a ton just shy of a bushel or some 50 pounds of grain next May or June.

You've probably harvested that weight in tomatoes from a single row. But tomatoes are mainly water and sugars, providing 60 calories of food energy per cup. Grain is concentrated energy, containing 400 calories per cup. The single bushel harvested from a 30' x 30' home-sized garden won't fully nourish an individual or provide 40% of family nutrition for more than a couple of weeks. But it will let you serve super-fresh, all homegrown bread, rolls or pan bread for holidays, parties and Sunday dinners over the course of a year.

Ground Preparation, CAre and Rotation
A farm tractor and implements are practically essential for tending an acre or more of small grain, but their purchase, care and fueling can't be justified by a smaller plot. Sit-on lawn and garden tractors are designed to mow large suburban lawns and do offer accessories such as mini-disc sets and small plows that are fine for playing farmer in a small garden. But they lack axle width, tire height, weight and torque/power to handle even fraction-0f-an-acre-sized fields, and new ones cost as much as a good used farm tractor. And don't plan to use even the biggest rotary tiller to cut more than a quarter acre of sod; it'll take several long, slow passes to get the job done. If you need to plow more than a quarter acre of new ground, rent a Boomer, Kubota or JD 4000 series with land plow, discs and harrow, or hire a neighboring farmer.

Before planting a cereal grain, lime your soil as needed and work it until it's as finely tilled and weed-free as possible. You can cultivate row-planted corn and drilled grains, but unless you use selective herbicides, it's impossible to weed small grains planted to optimum density by broadcasting the seed. Especially important is to kill off all perennial weeds-particularly the persistent meadow grass called witch grass or quack grass that fills sod with a snarl of tough, white underground jointed stems. If you try to plow it under or till it in, you'll just cut the stems into pieces that'll all make new plants. (You can, however, put this nuisance weed to work by grinding it into flour. See page 58.)

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