What happened this summer 2022

This year I planted 240 sq. feet of Chevalier barley and came up with 23 lbs. in total. I could probably make 10 gallons of beer out of that which would amount to roughly 120 standard-size (355ml) bottles. So 1 bottle per 2 square feet, not bad, could have been better though as I did get some lodging.

May 15, 4 weeks after planting and it’s coming up nicely

May 23

May 29

June 12

June 27 It couldn’t have looked any better and then….

July 6 After just one night of rain. These posts are my lame attempt at propping it up again just to get things away from the ground and the mice. Normally to prevent this from happening I use chicken wire suspended with posts about 2 feet off the ground, the barley grows through the holes of the chicken wire and is supported enough to not fall over when it rains, but this year I was either lazy or extremely optimistic. When the barley falls over it’s susceptible to mold and mice since it’s close to the ground. The kernals also stop growing and end up being quite small.

Some mice damage.

July 24 Almost harvest time. The green that you can see is weeds. The owl is standing guard, keeping the critters away.

Harvesting took a few days over the course of a couple of weeks. I just hand-pick the heads so that I can leave the areas that are not fully ripe. This year I tried a new way of threshing which is going to make my life so much easier. I just stomped on it while it was in the Rubbermaid bins. I waited a few weeks after harvesting to make sure the kernels were hard. This method works surprisingly well, about 10 minutes of stomping and shuffling around in the bin and it’s done, no more noisy drill!