Gardening with Grains. Brie Arthur
by adding essential organic matter into the ground layer. Decomposition is really the key to feeding the soil’s biology, and that will in turn feed your plants.
MY FAVORITE NATURAL AMENDMENT IS GROUND LEAVES!
Leaves truly are God’s gift to gardeners, so don’t rake them to the street or burn them. Instead, mow or shred them and topdress your beds. They will quickly break down and add nutrients to your soil.
Did you know… a plant’s biomass is the combined weight of its plant material above and below the ground? Plant biomass can be valuable as a storehouse of the sun’s energy gained through photosynthesis.
CROP ROTATION: Grains are frequently included in agricultural crop rotations as a means of building soil health, suppressing specific diseases and pests and adding nutrients back to the earth. This was a common practice in the pre-chemical era of farming, and I hope to see a resurgence of thoughtful crop rotations in the future. In particular, I want to encourage home growers to adopt this practice, as it is an easy way to improve the space you are growing in. Remember, there is no rule that says you can’t apply a farming technique to your home landscape, just like there is no requirement for you to plant in straight lines when you are hand planting and harvesting!
To that end, cereal grains are ideal cover crops because their deep roots literally scavenge for nutrients. Essentially, as the grain develops, the roots seek out nutrients deep in the earth and draw them back to the surface through the stems and leaves. Barley, oats and wheat are particularly useful scavengers, providing natural fertility for the next season.
If I have said it once in my talks to gardeners, I’ve said it a thousand times: Healthy soil results in happy plants, less disease and reduced insect pressure – and higher yields for you and your loved ones to enjoy.
Some useful botanical definitions
(you will not be tested on this)
Understanding exactly what a cereal grain is may not seem important, but often people, including myself, find themselves confused. I want to take this opportunity to very generally explain the various categories and terminologies so you can feel like an expert!
Plants are first distinguished by their structure in the cotyledon stage, which simply refers to how many leaves appear upon germination. There are plants that will develop only one leaf, commonly referred to as a monocot and others that will have two leaves known as dicots.
MONOCOTYLEDONS are defined as flowering plants such as grasses, lilies and palms that have a single vein in the seed. Upon germination, a single leaf will appear. Monocots also share a combination of characteristics, including leaves with parallel veins and flower parts in multiples of three. They also lack secondary growth, which means they have a single growing point and do not “bush out” if you break the top off; this is known as “apical dominance,” where the stem of the plant grows more strongly than other side shoots. Traditional grains are monocots.
DICOTYLEDONS include many of the most common garden specimens like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, beans and peas. They are flowering plants that have two seed leaves and typically have flower parts in multiples of four or five and pollen with three pores. The leaves have reticulate venation (web-like veining) and they also have the capacity for secondary growth. This is why you can prune the tips of plants to induce a bushy growing habit.
PSEUDO-CEREAL GRAINS are starchy grains from broadleaf plant families; they are dicots. This includes amaranth, buckwheat, chia and quinoa. These tend to be easy-to-grow warm season crops that can set millions of seeds – which can become a problem for the home grower. Amaranth in particular can become quite a garden pest, difficult to eradicate. If you are inclined to grow it, I recommend harvesting the seed early to avoid the potential for a future invasion.
Buckwheat is a pseudo-cereal in the Amaranthaceae family.
Peanuts make a wonderful addition to the landscape (top photo), in addition to being a nutritious crop.
Rapeseed planted at Chanticleer is an oilseed grain.
GRAIN LEGUMES, also called pulses, are members of the pea family (Fababceae) and offer high protein content, ranging from 20-40%. These plants are dicots. In addition to being a source of protein, legumes also contain carbohydrate and fat. Delicious crops such as chickpeas, beans, lentils, peanuts, peas and soybeans are considered legumes. Grains and legumes are ideal companion plants and should be utilized in regular crop rotations to maximize the available nutrients in your soil. Legumes are nitrogen fixers; in addition to being important sources of nutrition, they also increase fertility in the soil.
OILSEED GRAINS are primarily grown for the extraction of their edible oil, fuel or lubricant. Many plants fall into this category, though most home gardeners grow them for their foliage and flowers. Mustards and rapeseed (the source of Canola oil) from the Brassicaceae family are important oilseed plants. Others include flax, hemp, poppy, safflower, sesame and sunflowers.
All of these plants grow in similar conditions to traditional cereal grains. I encourage you to consider growing these to complement your traditional landscape and expand your horizons. Even if a plant seems impractical from a harvesting perspective, that’s okay! As home gardeners, we have the privilege of growing plants simply for the experience. Even a novelty crop can provide valuable educational opportunities as well as fascination and exposure to something out of the ordinary. ■
Three
The Entwined History of Humans and Cereal Grains
(briefly told)
Iam going to start this chapter with something I said in the last chapter (I feel it’s that important): People and society as we know it today would not exist without the evolving cultivation of grains. Regardless of where you stand on the subject of consumption of cereal grains, this point cannot be ignored: Homo sapiens and grains co-evolved, and human life on this planet would not be as it is without this interaction.
If you will permit me a small rant: It drives me crazy as we endure an era where the fundamental value of cereal grains is minimized and dismissed in our diets. It has become just too easy to blame the carbs in grains for our increasing waistlines while disregarding the issues of processed foods. These times find us at odds with the vitally important concept of eating nutrient-dense foods, and instead offer fast, less nutritious alternatives at the expense of our health. We seem to have a serious disconnect between nutrition and long-term wellness. This hasn’t happened overnight. It has followed closely on the increased industrialization and mass marketing of food production – along with our increased separation from the sources of our food. I suppose blaming bread and our genes is the easiest approach, but that’s hardly the whole picture.
SO, WHAT IS THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUE OF CEREAL GRAINS”? At the early stages of human evolution, grains were there to provide much-needed caloric intake for our ancient ancestors. Cereals are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats and oil. Grains were cultivated not only as food for people, but to provide energy for grazing animals and to improve soil health. Yet, in this era where people are so far removed from where their food is grown, grains have been turned into an enemy rather than a resource for healthy living.
It is generally believed that people first began eating grains at least as far back as 75,000 years ago in the Middle East. These grains, including einkorn and emmer wheat, were ancestors of today’s Triticum species. Both