Gadenin日本語Get the appDeciding when the seed goes in
Sowing time follows the habit of the seed you have, not the calendar. Winter barley must go in during autumn, ideally six to eight weeks before the ground freezes, so the plants reach three or four tillers and a crown well anchored below the surface before growth stops. Sown too early it grows lush and soft and suffers in the cold. Sown too late it goes into winter as a single thread of leaf and heaves out of the ground on the first hard freeze and thaw.
Spring barley goes in as early as the soil can be worked without smearing. It germinates at soil temperatures as low as 39F (4C) and the seedlings tolerate frost easily, so there is nothing to be gained by waiting for warmth and a great deal to be lost. Barley fills its grain badly in heat, and every week of delay pushes grain fill closer to midsummer. Early sowing is the whole technique with spring barley.
The test for workable soil is the same one you use for peas. Squeeze a handful and drop it from waist height. If it shatters, sow. If it holds together as a wet lump, wait, because barley resents a compacted seedbed more than most cereals and a smeared surface layer will hold water on a crop that hates wet feet.
Ground barley actually wants
This is where barley earns its place in a garden. It is the most alkaline-tolerant of the common cereals, growing well from about pH 6.5 up to 7.8 and still cropping at 8.0, which is where wheat starts to go yellow and stall. It is also markedly more drought-tolerant once established and matures early enough to finish before a dry midsummer bites. The corner of the plot that is thin, chalky and dries out first is a barley corner.
What it does not tolerate is wet. Barley has a shallower root system than wheat or rye and it is the first of them to go yellow and stunt on ground that lies wet after rain. It is also the least tolerant of acidity. Below pH 6.0 it takes up manganese and aluminum poorly, comes up patchy and never recovers. If your soil reads under 6.0, lime the autumn before you intend to sow rather than trying to fix it at sowing.
Keep fertility moderate on purpose. Barley responds to nitrogen by growing tall, soft straw that lodges flat in the first summer storm once the ears are heavy, and by producing high-protein grain that malts and cooks poorly. A bed that grew a well-fed vegetable crop last season needs nothing at all. A tired bed wants a light dressing worked in before sowing and no more.
| Condition | What barley does | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| pH 6.5 to 7.8 | Grows well. This is the sweet spot | Nothing |
| pH above 8.0 | Still crops where wheat would fail | Nothing. This is why you chose barley |
| pH below 6.0 | Patchy stand, yellow leaves, stunted | Lime the season before sowing |
| Ground that lies wet after rain | Shallow roots rot, plants yellow and stall | Raise the bed or sow elsewhere |
| Thin, dry, chalky soil | Copes better than any other cereal | Sow it here in preference |
| Recently manured or heavily fed | Tall soft straw that lodges flat | Add nothing more and expect to need support |
Rate, depth and spacing
Barley is sown thick. A stand that looks uncomfortably dense at the four-leaf stage is a correct stand, because a thick crop shades out weeds, holds itself up against wind, and ripens more evenly than a thin one. There is no thinning stage in a cereal crop at any point, and a gappy stand is a permanent loss rather than something the plants grow out of.
Depth matters more than most people expect. An inch to an inch and a half (2.5 to 4 cm) is right in ordinary moist soil, and up to two inches (5 cm) in dry spring ground so the seed reaches moisture. Shallower than three quarters of an inch (2 cm) leaves the crown too near the surface, which costs you tillers and, in an autumn sowing, invites frost heave over winter. Deeper than two and a half inches (6 cm) and emergence goes thin and slow.
For a garden block, sowing in shallow drills beats broadcasting. Drills give even depth, let you hoe between rows for the first month, and make it obvious what is barley and what is weed while everything is still grass-like. Broadcast and raked in is faster and fine for a cover crop or a fodder block where evenness does not matter.
| Method | Seed quantity | Depth | Spacing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drills, spring sowing | About 3 oz per square yard (100 g per square meter) | 1 to 1.5 in (2.5 to 4 cm) | Rows 6 to 8 in (15 to 20 cm) apart |
| Drills, autumn sowing | About 2.5 oz per square yard (85 g per square meter) | 1.5 to 2 in (4 to 5 cm) | Rows 6 to 8 in (15 to 20 cm) apart |
| Broadcast and raked in | About 3.5 oz per square yard (120 g per square meter) | Raked to roughly 1 in (2.5 cm) | Even scatter, no rows |
| Cover crop or fodder block | About 4 oz per square yard (135 g per square meter) | Raked to roughly 1 in (2.5 cm) | Even scatter, sown deliberately thick |
Sowing a block, step by step
The whole operation takes under an hour for a bed of a few square yards, and the only step people skip is the last one, which is the one that decides whether the stand comes up evenly.
- Rake to a fine, level surface Break down clods to roughly pea size in the top two inches (5 cm). Barley seed is small and a cloddy surface gives you seed at six different depths and a stand that emerges over ten days instead of four.
- Draw shallow drills across the bed Use the corner of a hoe or a cane laid on the surface and pressed down. Aim for a flat-bottomed furrow an inch to an inch and a half (2.5 to 4 cm) deep so every seed sits at the same level.
- Sow along the drill about half an inch apart Roughly twenty to twenty-five seeds per foot (65 to 80 per meter) of row. Weigh out what the whole bed needs first and divide it between the drills, rather than sowing generously at one end and running short.
- Cover and level with the back of the rake Draw soil back over the drills and level the surface. Do not bury deeper than you intended by heaping soil along the rows.
- Firm the whole bed Walk it or press it with the back of a spade. Firming is the step that matters most: barley needs close contact between seed and soil to draw water, and a loose seedbed dries out around the seed and gives a thin, staggered stand.
Do not thin at any stage. If patches fail to emerge after two weeks, sow the gaps again straight away rather than waiting. Barley resown more than about three weeks behind the main stand will ripen late and complicate the harvest of the whole bed.
The first six weeks, and what to write down
Expect emergence in seven to twelve days in spring soil and a little longer in cold autumn ground. The first leaf comes up as a single spike, and about two to three weeks later side shoots begin to appear from the base. That is tillering, and it is the stage that determines your yield: each strong tiller carries an ear. A well-established plant produces three to five of them, more in an autumn sowing that has all winter to build them.
Hoe between the rows twice during this period and then stop. Once the crop closes over and the leaves meet between the rows it shades out most weeds by itself, and further hoeing only damages the shallow roots. Water only if the bed is genuinely dry at two inches (5 cm) down during the first month, because a barley seedling that has to reach for water builds a better root system than one that is kept wet.
Record the sowing date, the depth, the weight of seed and the area, and then the date you first see emergence and the date you first see tillers. Sketch the block and mark where each type went if you sowed more than one. Those five entries are what let you judge next season whether a thin stand was a seed problem, a depth problem or a firming problem, and it is almost never the seed.