| One of the earliest domesticated cereals and reasonable for bread making
but wonderful for stock feed and beer making. Excellent feed grain,
the straw is also much loved feed for goats. Frost and snow hardy, a
winter and summer grain.
Barley can be added to soups, bread and used for beer making. |
A very frost sensitive plant. Otherwise remarkable and effective.
If you can grow maize you should do so instead of barley unless you make
beer. Remember half the feed value of maize is in the stover (the maize
straw). Do not waste this! Maize can also be grown just to be cut and
fed to stock without it ever flowering.
A really useful and versatile cereal. |
People and stock can live on little else for quite a while. Feed the
straw and seed heads together. No need for threshing - and your animals
will bloom.
Ground, milled or rolled they are good for people.
Best grown over winter in most places. A useful, productive grain
that can be fitted into most versions of The System. |
Not to be confused with rye grass, a pasture species, Rye Corn prefers a
sandier soil to most grains. A great starter grain for, at least, the
first few years of the system.
Grows well on more mature, enriched beds and produces both grain and
straw adored by stock. The grain can be a little unpalatable for some
stock but a scattering of seaweed meal mixed in does the trick. |
Along with barley, one of the first grains to be domesticated. Wheat is
the staff of life. So important, that it has come to represent wisdom in
middle eastern cultures. The best grain for bread making. As a feed
for ruminants it really needs to be ground and soaked in water
overnight, otherwise it swells in the rumen and can kill.
Save it for people, chooks and pigs! |
