Small Scale Wheat Growing

I'm shocked I didn't write this post a couple months ago. It completely slipped my mind for some reason. Better late than never!

This year, I experimented growing wheat in our allotment plots. Yes, you read this right, wheat. I realise it is an unconventional choice for an allotment. I think that is why I chose to do it. I'm always looking to do something a bit different.

If you examine this photo, you might notice something rather curious. This wheat is growing differently than what you see in bog-standard farmers' fields in the UK where the wheat all looks the same, knee high with uniform ears missing awns (whiskers). 

As you can see, my wheat is totally different. Far more unruly, just the way I like it, hahah! The individual plants are growing at different heights, most way over the knee. There is also incredible variation in the wheat ears, some have long awns, others have none. Some ears are huge, others have far fewer kernels.

What is going on here? Why is there such diversity? Don't worry, this was fully intentional.

I thought carefully about what variety to sow. In fact, I didn't want to limit the genetic diversity of my wheat by choosing a single variety. I wanted loads of variation because, cultivated in such an unconventional way, I had no idea what variety would grow best. I thought, if my crop is diverse, who cares if some plants fail. The failures will be nullified by others that thrive with slightly different genetics. Then, when next year rolls around, the following generation will be better adapted to the local growing conditions.

I achieved this genetic diversity by planting YQ Wheat developed by the John Innes Centre at Wakelyns. Their YQ Wheat isn't a single variety at all. Instead, it is described as 'population' wheat. The team at Wakelyns developed their population by taking 20 parent varieties of wheat, 19 modern varieties and one ancient variety, and breeding them with each other. They literally made 190 breeding crosses mixing all the resulting grain together to create the population. What a feat!

YQ actually stands for Yield and Quality. I wholeheartedly agree with this description. As far as I'm concerned, the wheat I harvested possessed both these pleasing characteristics. Next growing season, I'm so looking forward to carrying on the next generation of my locally evolving population. Such fun!