A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

I would never have guessed that this could work; I assumed that rice we can buy on the shelf has had enough processing to render it no longer viable as a growable seed. Sort of fascinating that you got such a unique and pretty type of rice to grow that way, even if you got no further seeds.

I've an eye for that Utrecht Blue wheat, in the photos I've seen it's so striking and beautiful. I'm still tempted to grow it, but as a celiac that would probably be a lapse in judgement. Then again, it's not like I plan to cook it, more like stick it in a vase. I dunno, there is just so many interesting things to try it sort of falls lower on the list I guess.

After my little amaranth experiment this summer I'm tempted to try other varieties. It was such an impressive plant and so many people asked me for seeds for it, being that they were growing in the front yard. I wouldn't eat the seed heads, but the flowery tops are eye candy. There is a pastel pink one I'd like to try, 'Flamingo'. I wonder if they can cross pollinate? Being a grain, and thus wind pollinated, I'd think yes?

It works like this. White rice WON'T grow, since it's been polished (had all of the germ stripped off of it) and is basically now just the starchy endosperm. But non polished rices, like brown rice still have all of their germ, and so are viable. You don't actually NEED the hull to be there to get them to grow (though the process of removing it does tend to break a lot of grains, so most people would leave it on planting stock).

I'm not sure if all grains are wind pollinated, but all GRASSES are. Amaranth, while considered a grain nutritionally, is not a grass, so I don't know if it is wind pollinated.

One warning if you do ever try and grow forbidden rice (or cook it). WEAR OLD CLOTHES. All of those anthocyanins mean that the water you soak it in basically turns into DYE, and anything you splash with it is basically going to be purple FOREVER. We had the famous "Black Death Paella" incident, which looked like blueberry pie filling (and stained the enamel pot we cooked it in so bad we had to throw it out. Or the turtleneck back in college after I opened the jar I had been soaking while I was back home for the holidays (which was the worse possible time to get it stained, as the airline has just lost my luggage with all of my clothes, so I didn't really have anything to change into.)*

As someone who has grown for the vase, I should warn you that getting vase-worthy grain is sort of dependent on your pest issues. The heads have to be full and clean for it to look good, and that's not the case with everything (see my comments about the shot wheat).

From my own experience, both the black and gold emmer wheats from Kusa grow very nicely as display heads (Salt Spring has both). In general, durum wheats make better display wheats than bread wheats (since they have that classic "boxy" shape with the long, flat topped beard, while a lot of moderns bread wheats are sort of sloppy looking). Bearded generally look better than beardless. In the case of barley, six row generally look better than two row (there was a beautiful squat six row I used to have in college, looked like a papyrus head in shape).

"Club" wheat (T.a, compactum) CAN have a very cute, "chubby" look to it, but it depends on the variety. You do NOT want the Mt. Pima club Native Seeds carries (it's beard is very messy and irregular). If you can get stuff from the OSSI up there in Canada, the Rocky Mountain Grex they offer might have some potential if selected (club wheats were popular in parts of the West in older times, but have mostly been supplanted by modern hybrids now which have "standard" heads.

Poulard wheat (T.a. polonicum) can be interesting (looks like a bunch of oat heads combined into a wheat head) rivet wheat (T.a. turgitum) can look like a bunch of wheat heads all bunched together (but tends not to have particularly well formed ones, so you wind up with a blob).