As you all know, I recently went on a roadtrip to the rural areas of Sindh province - And I returned with some wheat. Wanted to experiment with it, mainly growing. Because as a doomsday prepper, it is an obsession to find better and more efficient methods of growing such crops. However, another idea that I've been dreaming about (since I was 6 year old) is wheat farming in space, with hydroponics! However for one reason or another, I just never could get wheat kernels that I could grow. But that has changed now! So get ready, as I now prepare to feed myself (during a calamity) - Anybody got any advice for me??? Of course, I promise to keep on uploading pictures of my progress - Perhaps this really will be the project that will finally make me opt for hydroponics! As long as off the grid self-sustained living is the answer... Wheat dried and ready to be planted ( photo / image / picture from S-H's Garden ) Dried wheat ( photo / image / picture from S-H's Garden ) Wheat 1 ( photo / image / picture from S-H's Garden )
Great project S-H! I'm also experimenting with grains, the ancient wheats like Einkorn, Spelt, Farro, etc... Also with some experimental perennial ryes and wheat. I look forward to your progress reports!
I seem to remember during the Biosphere 2 experiment, they grew several grains including wheat. There may be a few papers on the subject. Jerry
Yes Jerry, I have read some of them which were available on the net. But Biosphere 2 was a failed system, as all their oxygen started to bond with the cement structure (a fatal mistake that would have resulted in many deaths in space)... However, to read the papers which would really be helpful - I needed to learn Russian (as the Soviet space program did a lot of work on this, that actually succeeded). But thanks to Google Translate, this too isn't a problem anymore! Still, there is no substitute for experimenting by your own hands! As then we find a lot of things that were never mentioned in literature - For example, I had no idea that freshly picked wheat kernels (when I placed them in a petri dish), started to smell exactly like vanilla. I honestly have no idea how this is possible - But I know what vanilla smells like. And this was exactly like that... Yet nowhere in any document is this mentioned in detail. My guess is that it's actually full of vitamins at this point (along with many more nutrients) - But what we buy from the supermarkets has decayed over time... I just never noticed it, as I never had the chance to compare it with the real thing - Until now! Anyway, I'm attempting to sprout a few of them now. So let's see where this experiment will take me! Sprouting wheat ( photo / image / picture from S-H's Garden )
