Subsistence Wheat -- Low Tech Podcast, No. 66 

We have sorghum growing in our backyard. Came up naturally.

Perhaps maize might be a better grain to grow on a subsistence scale than wheat. But the ideal would be growing both, in rotation with legumes and roots.

Potatoes are easy. So are Sweet Potatoes. We aim for 400-500 pounds of each for two of us. That gets us roughly 25-30% of our calories for an entire year on about 3-4 days labor (2-ish days each). That's HUGE. The advantage to grains is pretty much Forever Storage. Our potatoes only last 8 to 9 months. We have to grow 2 succession (April planting for July Harvest and July planting for Oct harvest) to get through a year's eating without energy intensive preservation (canning, dehydrating, freezing, etc). Sweet Potatoes do better. We get 18-24 months on stored Sweet Potato tubers. No pests and fewer diseases, too. Grains come out of the field already preserved and are perfectly good after a full decade of storage. The grains take less than half the storage space on a calorie basis. I can store considerably more than a full year's calories in Wheat in the same space I can store only 6 months of Potatoes. We prefer Sweet Potatoes for growing ... but regular Potatoes for eating. Wheat, for us, isn't a primary crop. We plant Winter Wheat as an over wintered cover crop. Most is terminated in Spring, long before seed heads. The Fall planted garden beds, we'll leave it go until seeded out and harvest in July. Will process and save one or two bushels. It's HELLA more work than the 'Taters. No machinery, everything by hand (and a box fan) We've tried Barley. Fails due to whatever local bird likes it. They strip the seed heads bare. An unexpected Win, though, are Pearl Millet and Sorghum. If you're subsistence growing in my area, you HAVE TO try these two.

Didn't they find traces of cooked grains 100 000 years old in Africa somewhere? Also, an argument can be made that it would be simpler to just pick fermented fruit on ground, or later, squish fruits and drink the fermented juice. Can I suggest the native sunchoke as a backup for potatoes? It could double as an ornamental...

I don't have a citation for this off the top of my head, but in general, modern varieties of crops tend to vastly out-yield traditional varieties with high "best-practice" fertilization methods. However, traditional varieties tend to out-yield modern varieties under low-fertility situations.

How about the native wild rice?

i think evolution is simply selecting the best possible solution... plants seem to do this by selecting the microorganisms best suited to them and storing them into their seeds...

Nutrition wise, we're the only animal on the planet expressing amylase in saliva. So, I'd say we're uniquely equipped to digest cooked grains, provided we chew them properly.

GMO is the main reason you should grow all your own grain organic seed

You mention that potatoes would take 40 hours per year for 2/3 of caloric intake, how many hours would this take for wheat?

You mentioned potatoes as an easier more productive staple. I agree they can produce more food for less work, but this does come with trade offs. Producing potato “seed” that will produce a high yielding food crop is quite a bit more difficult than saving grain seed. Potatoes have also historically been grown in rotation with other cereals and pulses, so it’s not really a one or the other situation. Enjoyed your show and all the work you all do.

Content warning for agricultural misunderstandings of the lavatory kind. And some dross to keep it below the read more line. [deliberately out of touch] lack of fertilizer? just pee on it

Highly fertilizing your heritage wheat puts you at risk for lodging