100% homegrown

[captain carrot]

While I admire your dedication and vision, at some point you gotta say, "There's a convenience store up the street that sells beer."

Keep us posted on your progress!

"Or a homebrew store that sells malted barly."
I reallize its not the point but I would be curious to know what the cost per lb of the finished product is.
I commend you on the effort!

[drummstikk]

cost per lb

So far I've spent $14 on seeds, including shipping. I spent $20 on a bag of fertilizer, but will only use a few pounds this year. Let's call it $5 of fertilizer per year. I probably used $1 worth of Roundup. I don't know what type of yield I'll get, but I hope it's at least 100 lbs. Maybe something like $0.20/lb for the raw grain? And malting costs nothing except water and gas for the oven. Anyway, it's not that much cheaper than buying raw 2-row for $0.35/lb, if you can find it locally, and malting it yourself. Farms are efficient. But it's far cheaper than buying a specialty base malt, which can be $1.50-$1.80/lb.

If I use, let's say $2 of fertilizer, mulch, and twine on a hop plant, and it gives me 1 pound of hops, that's $0.13/oz, compared with something like $1.25/oz at freshops.

If you neglect time and fixed costs, I bet growing will cost something like 10% of buying the ingredients at the LHBS.

I'll keep track of everything and calculate a cost per lb of grain and a cost per beer at the end!

[drummstikk]

First of all, thanks for all the encouragement you guys have been sending my way. It's nice to know that at least a splinter cell of the BN Army condones this insanity.

Second, are these tillers? It seems like every university cooperative extension goes on and on about tillers, but none of them actually describes what barley tillers will look like. The best I've found is this presentation about wheat tillers. I'm forming my image of a barley tiller on the fact that it shouldn't be too different from wheat.

Anyway, are these tillers?





I'm curious, because apparently the timing and extent of tiller formation can help you determine how much Nitrogen to apply.

In other news, a few of the Conlon plants (as featured above) have leaf number three! Almost all of the Scottish Bere (four rows only) have three leaves. They're supposed to be quicker than the Conlon, and so far they are. But no squirrels in the traps yet...

[spiderwrangler]

They might be... some additional growth may be needed for it to be clearer that it's forming a new shoot.

[Henning1966]

Try checking this page out for a view of barley and the tillers http://www.extension.uidaho.edu/scseida ... gs/510.htm

[drummstikk]

Niiiiiice!

I bet what I'm looking at there are prophylls. I didn't know that was one way to distinguish a tiller from a primary leaf.

Also, tillers can form from the axils of leafs? Did not know. And tillers can form from other tillers?!!

Very informative, thanks!

[drummstikk]

The U Idaho Extension website that Henning posted gives a roadmap of what to expect for the coming weeks. The bere, pictured above, has four leaves and a coleoptillar tiller, which comes from below the ground.

Most of the Conlon now has a developing third leaf, which according to the U Idaho blog, is about a week behind the bere. The two varieties were planted at the same time, but develop at different rates.


In other news, I needed to finish fertilizing. I had applied 33 lb/acre right after emergence, but I should be closer to 60 lb/acre for the upper and middle fields (which grew soybeans last winter), and closer to 80 lb/acre for the lower field, which grew corn two summers ago and lay fallow last summer.

Because of the netting, I can't apply anything to the upper field. So, I laid down 1.25 lbs of urea on the middle and 2.5 lbs of urea on the lower. The total Nitrogen for upper, middle, lower is now 33 lb/acre, 56 lb/acre and 79 lb/acre.

It's worth thinking about this because you want to try to get the nitrogen in a sweet spot. Too little N and yield suffers through decreased tiller formation and fewer kernels per head. Too much N, and the protein in the finished grains will rise above 12.5%. This would still make beer, but 13% protein grain would be rejected by the malting industry. We've essentially never experienced high-protein barley, but I imagine it gives some problems similar to wheat and rye -- stuck sparges and hazy beers. The Queensland website is still the best one for figuring out how much N to target.


I'm still not sure when it's best to apply N. Intuitively, you might want to apply it in several doses during the plants' vegetative growth, so that the plants get a steady supply. But some extension websites claim that late N additions increase grain protein without affecting yield.

Another reason to fertilize early is this:



That urea chunk is right there in the middle of the plant, and if it's not removed or washed out, it will eventually burn the plant and kill it. Fortunately, there was only about one plant like this per row.

The field got an extra-good watering to help wash urea out of the plants and into the ground.

[Wheatwarden]

Here is my homemade thresher for the barley I grew this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxg6p07u ... MvvpgMTU0W