Gadenin日本語Get the appThe winter wheat year
Winter wheat is the longer commitment and the higher yielding of the two. It is sown in autumn, spends the winter as flat green grass gathering the cold it needs before it will make an ear, wakes in spring, joints, heads, flowers and fills through early summer, and is cut once the grain dents under a thumbnail. For the middle third of that period there is genuinely nothing to do, which is why it suits a bed you would otherwise leave bare.
The long occupancy is the real cost. A bed of winter wheat is unavailable from autumn right through to midsummer, so it cannot be part of a rotation that wants an early spring crop in that ground. Set against that, it holds the soil and its structure through the wet season, roots deeply, and can be abandoned as a green manure at any point up to jointing if you change your mind and want the bed back.
| Season | Growth stage | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Early to mid autumn | Sowing and emergence | Sow, firm, water once, cover against birds |
| Mid to late autumn | Tillering, three to five shoots | Weed between rows. No feed, no water |
| Winter | Dormant, flat, dull green | Nothing. This is the cold spell it needs |
| Early spring | Green-up, second flush of tillers | One light nitrogen feed. Weed once |
| Mid spring | Jointing, first node above soil | Stop feeding. Water if dry. Stay off the bed |
| Late spring | Booting and heading | Put netting up before ears emerge |
| Early summer | Flowering, then grain fill | Water in drought. Check ears every few days |
| Midsummer | Ripening, straw yellowing | Stop watering. Test grain with a thumbnail |
| Mid to late summer | Hard dough, harvest | Cut, stook ten to fourteen days, thresh |
The spring wheat year, in half the time
Spring wheat runs the same sequence with the winter removed. It goes in as soon as the soil can be raked to a crumb, emerges in five to eight days, tillers through mid spring, joints and heads in early summer, and is ready to cut four to five months from sowing. There is no vernalisation requirement, so it does not need and does not benefit from a cold period, and sowing it in autumn simply exposes it to frost at a stage when it cannot survive one.
It tillers less, because it has only one window in which to do so rather than two, and it therefore yields perhaps a fifth to a quarter less than a winter crop from the same bed. Sow it a little more thickly to compensate. It also runs its grain fill into the hottest part of the year, which is where its other weakness lies: a hot dry spell during filling gives thin pinched grain, and there is no way to recover from it except to water.
Its advantage is flexibility. A spring crop leaves the bed free all winter, fits into a normal rotation, and gives you a result inside a single season, which is the reason most people trying wheat for the first time should start with it. If it works and you enjoy the threshing, an autumn sowing the same year is the natural next step.
The three decisions that shape the season
Almost everything else follows from these three, and each of them has a narrow window in which it can be made. Miss any one and the season is largely decided for you.
- Which type, chosen at the seed packet Winter for yield and for holding a bed over the wet season, spring for a result inside one season. Getting this wrong and sowing at the opposite time gives grass with no ears, or a stand killed by frost.
- How much nitrogen at spring green-up This is the one feeding decision in the entire season and it determines whether the crop stands or lodges. A light dressing once, or nothing at all in a bed that grew heavy vegetables last year.
- When the netting goes up It has to be standing before the ears push clear of the boot, because after that you cannot walk into the bed without breaking stems, and the birds arrive as soon as the grain reaches milk stage.
- When to cut, judged by thumbnail Hard dough, when a kernel dents and holds the dent. Cutting here rather than at full ripeness avoids shedding, avoids a rain event on a standing crop, and costs nothing in weight.
Where a wheat bed fits in the rest of the garden
At garden scale wheat earns its place for three reasons, and flour is the least of them. It is grown for the interest of taking a crop from seed to loaf yourself, for the armful of long clean straw that comes with it, and as a cover crop that holds a bed through winter and can be turned in as green manure whenever you want the ground back. A few square yards yields a few pounds of grain, which is a loaf or two, and it is better to expect that from the start than to be disappointed by it.
It follows a heavy feeder well, since it wants low fertility and will use up what a brassica or a squash bed left behind. It should not follow grass, where wireworm is common, and it should not go back into the same bed two years running, because the fungal leaf diseases carry over on stubble and debris. After harvest the bed is free in midsummer, which is late for most sowings but perfect for a fast green manure or an autumn salad crop.
If you want the straw more than the grain, a spring sowing cut green at flowering gives soft pliable straw for mulch and clears the bed a month earlier. If you want the green manure, cut and turn in at any point up to jointing, when the plant is at its most tender and breaks down fastest.
The dates worth keeping
Five entries cover a whole wheat season and take a minute each: the sowing date with the type and the area of the bed, the emergence date, the date of spring green-up, the date the first ears cleared the boot, and the cutting date with the weight of cleaned grain.
Those five turn one season's guesswork into next season's plan. The sowing to emergence gap tells you whether your autumn sowing went in too late into cold soil. The heading date tells you when netting has to be ready. The heading to cutting gap is your grain fill period, and if it was short and the grain threshed light, a hot spell during filling is the explanation. And grain weight against bed area is the only figure that lets you compare one year honestly with the next.