Gadenin日本語Get the appReading a head that ripens from the top down
The head of barnyard millet is a stiff, compact, bristly cluster of short branches, and it fills from the tip downwards. By the time the bottom of the head is at soft dough the top is already ripe and beginning to loosen, which is the central problem of harvesting this crop. There is no single moment when the whole head is perfect.
The test is the same one you use on any small grain. Take a few grains from the middle of the head and press one between a thumbnail and a finger. At soft dough it squashes into a white paste. At hard dough it dents and resists but does not shatter, and the grain has gone from green through straw to its final color. At full ripeness it is hard enough to crack against a fingernail, and the head has changed from upright and green to nodding, dry and colored.
Cut at hard dough on the middle of the head. That is a few days earlier than looks right, and it is the correct decision on this crop for two reasons: the top of the head has already been ripe for several days by then and is ready to shed, and grain cut at hard dough finishes ripening perfectly well in the head once it is cut and dried under cover. Waiting for the base of the head to reach full ripeness means losing the top of every head onto the soil.
There is a second layer of unevenness. The crop tillers, so one plant carries a main head and several later tillers whose heads emerged a week or two afterwards. In a garden block you can go through twice, cutting the main heads first and the tiller heads a week later, and that is worth doing for a small patch. On anything larger, cut the whole block when the main heads reach hard dough and accept the tiller heads as a partial loss.
| Stage | How the head looks and feels | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | Green head, grain squirts white liquid | Far too early. Two to three weeks to go |
| Soft dough | Head still green at the base, grain squashes to paste | Get netting on if it is not on already |
| Hard dough at mid-head | Head nodding, straw colored at the top, grain dents but holds | Cut now. This is the target |
| Fully ripe | Whole head dry and colored, grain cracks on a fingernail | Cut today, handle gently. The top has already shed some seed |
| Past ripe | Head thinning at the tip, seed on the ground beneath | You are feeding next year's weeds. Cut immediately |
Cutting, drying and threshing without scattering seed
Everything about handling this crop is about not letting seed hit the ground. Ripe barnyard millet shatters readily, and every grain that falls is a grass seedling in that bed for seasons to come. Carrying an armful of cut heads across the garden is the single most expensive habit you can develop with this crop.
- Cut into a container, not onto your arm Hold a bucket, a deep tray or an open sack under each head and cut the stem four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) below the head so the head drops straight in. Do this on a dry morning after the dew has gone, since damp heads will not dry properly afterwards.
- Dry the heads under cover for one to two weeks Spread them a single layer deep on trays or racks in a shed, greenhouse or airy porch, out of rain and out of direct sun. Turn them every few days. They are ready when the stems snap cleanly rather than bending and the grain cracks against a fingernail.
- Thresh inside a bag or a bin Put the dry heads in a stout sack or a lidded bin and rub, tread or beat them. The grain comes off easily once dry. Doing this inside a container rather than on a tarp keeps every escaping grain contained, which matters more on this crop than on any other garden grain.
- Winnow twice Pour the threshed material from one container to another in a light breeze or in front of a fan. The chaff and bristles blow away and the heavy grain falls. Two or three passes gets it clean of chaff, though the grain is still in its hull at this point.
- Deal with the residue deliberately Shake out the threshed heads and chaff, then burn them or bin them rather than composting. A cool compost pile does not kill this seed and the compost will carry it to every bed you spread it on.
The hull, and being honest about what it takes
What you have after winnowing is not edible grain. Each seed is enclosed in a tough, tightly fitting hull that has to come off before you can cook it, and on barnyard millet that hull is proportionally thick and the seed underneath is very small, barely a sixteenth of an inch (1.5 mm). This is the point at which most people who grow a garden block of this crop discover how much work is left.
Commercially this is done with abrasive dehullers that scour the hull off between rotating stones or rubber rolls. There is no simple home equivalent that works well. The methods people do use at home all work partially: light pounding in a deep vessel with a rounded pestle so the seed is rubbed rather than crushed, followed by winnowing and repeating; a grain mill with the plates opened far enough to abrade rather than grind; or brief soaking and drying to loosen the hull before pounding. Expect several cycles of pound, winnow, pound, and expect to lose some grain broken in the process.
The realistic yield from a garden block after hulling is roughly half to two thirds of the weight you started with. Decide before you sow what you actually want from the crop, because the answer changes how much you plant and how much of the labor you sign up for.
There is no shame in choosing not to hull. Barnyard millet in the hull is excellent bird food, a good poultry feed, and the whole plant cut before the seed sets is a fast, useful green manure on ground too wet for anything else. Many gardeners grow it for those uses and never touch a pestle.
| End use | Processing needed | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Grain for the kitchen | Thresh, winnow, dehull, winnow again | The full job. Several cycles, and 50 to 65 percent of the threshed weight survives |
| Bird or poultry feed | Thresh and winnow only | No hulling at all. The whole harvest is usable |
| Seed for next season | Thresh, winnow, dry hard, store cool and dry | Leave the hull on. It protects the seed in storage |
| Green manure or forage | None. Cut before seed sets | Cut at head emergence at the latest, so nothing can shatter |
Store hulled grain in an airtight jar in a cool dark place and use it within a few months. The germ is oily and small grains go rancid faster than large ones. Unhulled seed kept for sowing stores far longer, easily two to three seasons if it is properly dry and cool.
Saving seed, and what to record at harvest
Save seed from the middle of the block rather than the edges, from plants that stood upright and headed at the same time as the rest, and never from a block where you saw smut in the heads. Dry it harder than you would dry grain for eating, keep it in its hull, and label it with the season and the bed. Barnyard millet will cross with its weedy relatives, so if there is wild grass of the same family growing anywhere near the block, treat saved seed with suspicion and buy fresh every few years.
Record the date you cut, and count back to the date the heads emerged and the date you sowed. Those two intervals are the backbone of next year's plan and they are remarkably stable in one garden. Write down the threshed weight and, separately, the weight you were left with after hulling, because the second number is the one that tells you honestly whether the block was worth growing at that size.
Note how much seed you saw on the ground under the block after cutting, even roughly. That is the direct measure of how late you cut, and it is the number that argues for cutting three days earlier next season. Mark the bed on a sketch too, because you will want to watch it for volunteer grass seedlings for the next two or three seasons.