Making hay while the sun shines....

Buckwheat, shortly after sprouting

One of the unexpected lessons of my garden this summer has been the ins & outs of a funny little tri-cornered grain called buckwheat.  Those of us who like our breakfast foods fried on a griddle probably know of buckwheat pancakes, while the organic gardeners amongst us know of buckwheat as a quick cover crop which excels in loosening poor soil, crowding out weeds, and making nutrients available for future plants.  I planted a row in the garden last spring when I just couldn't face the idea of digging and working one more inch of ground in preparation for more finicky vegetable plants.  I planned (operative word) to follow directions and cut it down before it went to seed, then plant warmer weather stuff in its place.

A flowering jungle of buckwheat and bees.

If you are convinced that you have a black thumb...plant some buckwheat.  No, really.  It should be a poster-child for instant-gratification-gardening.  The seeds sprout within days, and the plants zip through their entire lifecycle (seed to seed) in 6 weeks.  (Attention chicken owners:  the girls are enormous fans of the sprouts!)  The white flowers aren't big or exceptionally pretty--but the pollinators adore them, and your garden will thank you.  If the soil-prep and pollination help aren't enough to convince you, there is one more gift from the buckwheat plant:  you get hay out of the deal in the end, if you'd like!

I would love to claim that I planned from the beginning to plant buckwheat and harvest the hay for winter bedding for my flock, but when I planted that original row, I had no idea that I would be unemployed & a chicken-wrangler by the end of the summer.  Rather then pulling the buckwheat and using that bed for veggies, I let the plants self-sow freely (due to lazy gardening, primarily, although this was easily rationalized as I watched the bees happily humming among the flowers).  Much to my surprise, this accidental crop will save me at least a few dollars in purchased litter for the girls and allows me--albeit in a small way--to close my homesteading loop just a little more.  One more way to provide for our needs without leaving home!  Hurray!

Drying the hay

While the plants pull up easily, I quickly found that cutting them off at the ground eliminates getting a bunch of dirt mixed in with the plant material--and leaves a little of the goodness to decompose back into the soil.  I piled up the buckwheat on a tarp to dry, occasionally taking my garden rake and flipping it over to expose it all to the sun.  And then, I got an old plastic tub and some garden twine and made a bale!  I positioned two pieces of twine across the width of the tub and one across the length, anchoring the ends underneath the tub to hold the twine in place.  Then I compressed as much of the hay as I could into a roughly rectangular bundle, dumped it in the tub, and stepped on top to crush it.  I repeated this until the tramped-down-hay reached the top of the tub, tied the twine tightly, and lifted out the bale (with a great deal of pride!)

Who knew this was so easy?

I ended up with two bales roughly 3'x1.5'x1.5'--and if I had been focused on cutting the hay every six weeks all summer, I am sure I could have easily tripled that amount on a 4'x18'  garden row, if not much more...another thing to track and measure next year!  In the meantime, I have a cheap & easy source of fresh green appetizers for the chickies all winter--now that I know how easily buckwheat sprouts.  Maybe next summer I'll try to harvest some of the grain and we'll have those buckwheat pancakes after all....