This is an old post I never finished until now.

For this post I will be going over some of my experience with the crops I grew the last several years as well as ideas I have going forward. In 2014 we grew Cereal Rye, Smoke Signals Popcorn, Reid’s Field Corn, Buckwheat, Wheat and Austrian Winter Peas. In addition to these we grew more varieties in our garden.

The spring of 2014 I grazed one of my two small Cereal rye fields. The cattle loved it, they chose to nibble the rye to the ground instead of grazing in the taller grass field they had access to alongside the rye field. So the cattle declared the rye a winner. I let the cattle graze the rye to the ground, and recycle it into fertilizer. When they had finished their work I tilled it under to plant Smoke Signals Popcorn and Black Oil Sunflower.

I am very impressed with how tenacious cereal rye is, it can be planted very late, later than any other grain. I planted rye the middle of November at the sawmill and it made an okay stand. I also had the small field I harvested at the farm reseed itself and now have a volunteer stand I will harvest again. Since I don’t use any herbicides on the fields, the tenacious nature of rye works well by smothering the competition without the need for chemicals. I am also sure I could let the cattle graze the rye down and it would rebound and produce a harvest-able crop.

With all the benefits it provides the drawback to rye grain that I have found is the critters do not particularly like it. The chickens love wheat and oats, but rye isn’t something they eat much of. As a cover crop rye is great, and I plan on using it for that purpose as well as early and late season grazing for the cattle. I will still use it in my poultry ration, although at a small percentage of the total, probably 5-10% of the ration.

For me cereal rye is a winner and has some real value as a crop. If you are going from sod to row crop rye is a great option. It can out compete a lot of weeds. The downfalls however are it isn’t the most edible crop, and its yields are low compared to many other crops.

Now we move on to the abysmal failure for the second time, Black oil sunflowers. For the second time in a row birds have eaten my crop. I wanted to grown sunflowers as a chicken feed, and also as a potential source of bio-diesel fuel. However those dreams crashed hard into reality. I cannot grow sunflowers, I am just feeding the birds. I figured if there was an acre of sunflowers the birds couldn’t possibly eat it all, but yet again I was mistaken. The problem seems to come from uneven maturity. The sunflowers mature from the outside working to the middle of the flower. To combine the crop I have to wait for the seeds in the middle to dry, however the birds are fine with eating the outside layer and inwards towards then the middle as the crop ripens. It makes a nice smorgasbord for weeks.

Since I don’t want to end on a failure I will move on to Smoke Signals Popcorn. This corn has been a great producer through droughts, weeds and it seems whatever Missouri can throw

at it. It is a very robust variety if popcorn, and it tastes great as flour for cornbread as well. If your looking for a great tasting variety of popcorn smoke signals is one to consider. However it has not popped well for us, but until I get a moisture tester I am not giving it a fair shake.

Our family has tested over thirty varieties of popcorn to pick the best for us, and the clear winner is South American Yellow, also called Dynamite. We will begin to grow this variety as well in the future.

Another winner this year was Buckwheat. It grew well and matured very quickly. If your looking for a quick crop or a cover crop this is one to consider. Our buckwheat crop went in without a hitch and had no problems. (the buckwheat even reseeded itself for 2015). Buckwheat however has the same draw back as cereal rye, the critters just don’t care for it.