Sowing Wheat in a Garden Bed: Winter and Spring Types

Winter or spring, decided before the seed goes in

Wheat comes in two habits, and the difference is not simply one of hardiness. Winter wheat requires vernalisation: a run of several weeks with temperatures below about 45F (7C) before it will switch from making leaves to making a stem and an ear. Spring wheat carries no such requirement and heads on accumulated warmth and lengthening days alone. As seedlings the two are indistinguishable, which is precisely why the mistake is so easy to make and so hard to spot until it is too late to fix.

Sow winter wheat in spring and you get grass. It germinates, it tillers, it stays green and healthy looking all summer, and it never joints, never heads, and gives you nothing to thresh. The cold spell it was waiting for never came, so the growing point stays down at the crown producing leaf after leaf. The patch is not wasted, exactly, since it can be cut for fodder or turned in as a green manure, but it will not make grain that season.

The reverse error is less absolute and more destructive. Spring wheat sown in autumn has no cold requirement holding it back, so it tries to joint during any mild spell in late autumn or midwinter. The growing point rises above the soil surface and the first hard frost kills it outright. Buy seed that is labeled clearly as one type or the other, and write which one it is on the bed marker, because six weeks later you will not be able to tell by looking.

Grain sold at a feed store, or as whole wheat for sprouting or milling, is usually of unknown habit and may have been heat treated. If you cannot establish which type you have, sow a small patch of it in spring. If it heads that summer it is spring wheat; if it stays as grass it is winter wheat.

Timing, depth, spacing and how much seed

Winter wheat wants to go in early enough to make roots and three to five tillers before the ground goes cold, and late enough that it does not grow lush and soft going into frost. Six to eight weeks ahead of your first hard frost is the working window, with soil temperature falling through 60F (15C). Spring wheat goes in as early as the soil can be worked without smearing, which in practice means as soon as it has drained enough to rake to a crumb, usually while nights are still cold.

Wheat is sown far more thickly than a vegetable, because you are growing a stand rather than individual plants and each plant contributes only three to six ears. It is also sown deeper than most small seed, an inch or more, which puts the crown far enough below the surface to survive frost heave and gives the roots something to anchor into. Sown too shallow, a winter stand lifts out of the ground during the first freeze and thaw cycle and dies in the open air.

Rows are easier to manage than broadcasting in a garden bed, because you can weed between them and see at a glance where the stand has failed. Broadcasting gives a slightly better yield per square foot but leaves you no way to walk into the bed, and a home grower needs to get in there to net it against birds.

Getting the seed in

The whole job takes about twenty minutes for a bed of a few square yards, and the only part that repays care is firming. Wheat germinates from close contact with moist soil, and a loose fluffy seedbed gives a patchy stand with bare gaps that fill with weeds all season.

1. Rake the bed level and firm it before sowing Break the surface to a crumb, remove stones and old roots, then walk the bed once or tamp it with the back of a rake. You want a surface that takes a footprint about a quarter of an inch (6 mm) deep, not one your boot sinks into.
2. Draw shallow drills six inches (15 cm) apart Use the corner of a hoe or a cane laid on the surface and pressed down. Aim for a flat bottomed furrow about an inch (2.5 cm) deep so that every seed sits at the same depth and the stand comes up together.
3. Sow along the drill, roughly an inch (2.5 cm) apart Trickle the seed from a cupped hand and do not try to be precise. Wheat tolerates crowding well and thins itself; gaps are the greater problem, so if in doubt sow a little heavier than you think you need.
4. Cover, firm again, and water once Draw the soil back over the drills with the flat of the rake, tamp lightly along each row, then water with a fine rose until the top two inches (5 cm) are damp. After that, autumn sowings usually need no more water at all.
5. Cover the bed against birds until the shoots are up Sown grain sitting under half an inch of soil is found and dug out by pigeons, sparrows and jays within a day or two. Netting, row cover or a sheet of chicken wire laid flat over the bed for the first two weeks is enough.

The first six weeks, and what to write down

Emergence looks like fine grass: a single narrow blade per seed, then a second and a third. Within about a month each plant starts producing tillers, side shoots that come from the crown at soil level, and each of those tillers is a potential ear. A winter sowing should carry three to five tillers per plant by the time growth stops for the year, and it will add more during spring green-up. Do not thin. A stand that looks uncomfortably crowded in autumn will be exactly right by summer.

Record the sowing date, which type you sowed, the depth and the area of the bed, and then the date you first saw green. That emergence interval tells you more about your own soil than any general figure does, and it is the number to check against next season if a stand comes up badly. Note the area in square yards or square meters too, because it is the only way to make sense of the weight of grain you eventually thresh.