Gadenin日本語Get the appThe shape of the season
Job's Tears runs long and finishes late. Reckon on 120 to 150 days from sowing to the first fully hard bead, then another six to eight weeks of repeated pick-overs, then three to four weeks of curing before anything goes into a jar. Counting backwards from your first frost date is the only sensible way to plan it, and if the arithmetic does not fit, start the plants indoors rather than sowing earlier outside.
The calendar below uses stages rather than dates so it reads the same in either hemisphere. Anchor it on two things: the last frost, and the point at which soil at two inches (5 cm) holds 65F (18C).
| Stage | When | What you do | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indoor start (short seasons only) | 4 weeks before last frost | Soak seed, sow in 3 in (8 cm) pots | Slow germination, 10 to 20 days |
| Direct sowing | Soil at 65F (18C), after last frost | Sow 1 to 1.5 in (4 cm) deep, 12 in (30 cm) apart | Keep the surface damp until up |
| Emergence to knee height | Weeks 3 to 7 | Hoe shallowly, thin to one plant per station | Weeds outrunning a slow crop |
| Knee height | Around week 7 | Feed once, earth up, corral at 2 ft (60 cm) | Do not overfeed with nitrogen |
| Stem extension | Weeks 8 to 12 | Water hard, add twine at 4 ft (1.2 m), cut weak tillers | Lodging after storms |
| Flowering and bead set | Weeks 12 to 16 | Keep water up, feed nothing | Borers, first smutted beads |
| First ripe beads | Weeks 17 to 21 | Begin pick-overs every 4 to 7 days | Beads dropping onto the soil |
| Final strip | Before first frost | Take everything with any color | Frost ruins what is left |
| Curing | 3 to 4 weeks after last pick | Single layer on screens, air moving | Mold in the first week |
| Clean-up | After the last pick | Pull stubble, collect dropped beads | Volunteers next spring |
Early season: getting a slow crop started
The first seven weeks are the least rewarding part of growing this plant. Germination takes ten to twenty days, the seedlings look like coarse grass, and they grow slowly enough that weeds can bury them. All the work in this window is protective: keep the seedbed damp until emergence is complete, hoe between the rows until the leaves close over, and thin to a single strong plant at each station once they are four inches (10 cm) tall.
Resist the urge to feed heavily to hurry things along. The plant is on its own timetable, and early nitrogen buys leaf you will regret in a storm three months later.
Mid season: the decisions that set the yield
From knee height to flowering is where the crop is made. Earth up, corral the block with twine, feed once and then stop, and water without fail. This is a wetland grass and it will not forgive a dry fortnight during bead set. If you have a permanently damp corner of the garden, this is the crop for it.
Flowering is inconspicuous, so watch for it deliberately: small, dangling structures in the leaf axils, and then hard green ovals beginning to swell where the flowers were. Note the date the first ones appear. From that point on, add nothing to the soil and simply keep the water going.
Late season: pick-overs, not a harvest day
There is no harvest day for this crop. The beads ripen from the bottom of each stem upward over six to eight weeks, and you go over the planting every four to seven days taking only what has reached full color and full hardness. Pick in the morning after the dew has gone, sort out the blemished beads as you pick, and lay a sheet under the clumps to catch what drops between visits.
When frost is forecast, strip everything with any color to it, ripe or not. Beads close to maturity will finish hardening indoors; anything left on the plant through a frost is a loss. Then pull the whole planting, roots and stubble together, and take it away rather than digging it in, because stubble carries both smut spores and overwintering borer larvae.
Curing is a separate stage, not the tail end of harvest. Even the hardest bead off the plant carries internal moisture, and three to four weeks in a single layer with air moving is what stands between a good crop and a jar that smells sour in midwinter.
The spring after, and the one after that
Job's Tears leaves a legacy in the soil. Every bead you failed to pick up is a seedling next spring, and in warm, wet regions those seedlings escape the garden entirely and turn into a weed problem along ditches and watercourses. Plan the spring after as part of the growing calendar, not as an afterthought: walk the old bed as soon as things start moving and pull the volunteers while they are small.
Where you do want to grow it again, move the planting to fresh ground. Two years off the same bed keeps smut in check, and volunteers coming up in last year's bed can simply be hoed off rather than being confused with the new sowing.
What to carry into next season
Six lines in the notebook cover this crop completely: the sowing date and the soil temperature you measured, the emergence date, the date of first flowering, the date of the first ripe bead, the date of the last useful pick-over, and the total you cured. Add the seed source and which of the two forms each row turned out to be.
Those numbers answer the questions that actually come up. Whether your season is long enough. Whether sowing a fortnight later would have given a better stand. How many pick-overs were worth walking out for. And, most usefully in the first couple of years, which of your seed sources gives edible grain and which gives beads fit only for stringing.