How to Plant Wheat

With rising food costs and farm fields growing biofuel production crops, planting one’s own grain is a growing practice across the nation. Most people never see wheat until they purchase the grain's end products--breads, cakes and cereals. Growing wheat, however, is simple and harvesting your own grain is rewarding. Read on to learn how to plant wheat.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Wheat seed
• Plow or tiller
• Drill (for large areas)

1. Prepare your soil. Luckily, wheat is a hardy crop that grows in many soil types unless the area is often under water. Soil, tilled at least three times before sowing wheat produces an optimum number of germinated seeds. Till the ground to a depth of 6 inches one month before planting and again two weeks before and one more time just before sowing.

2. Opt to use no-till technology to plant your wheat seed if you have many acres to plant and your area is prone to erosion. Check with your local county extension office about the cost to rent a no-till drill. Unfortunately, using no-till technology will lower the germination rate of your seed.

3. Sow your wheat seed approximately two weeks before the date of the first frost in your region. Unlike other crops, wheat must germinate in the late fall before it goes dormant over the winter in order for it to have sufficient time to develop in the spring. As a winter crop, it will grow a few inches before turning brown and appearing to be dead. Yet in early spring it will green up nicely.

4. Spread your seed by hand in a small family plot or use a drill for larger acreage. Most drills are available to rent from local agricultural cooperatives in farming communities. The name is deceptive, however, since the drill doesn’t drill anything. Numerous curved disks slice through the tilled soil and wheat seeds drop into the trenches left behind.

5. Drop your seed by hand, for a small crop, at the rate of one seed every 3 inches and space your rows 6 inches apart. If you like, you can spread a tiny bit of soil over the exposed seed to depth of 1/8 of an inch but if your soil is soft and porous, there is no need. The wheat seeds will fall into the low areas where they will quickly develop roots upon sprouting.

Tips & Warnings

• Have the pH level of your soil tested if you experience low germination rates when planting wheat. Organic cover crops, such as clover, planted early in the spring and tilled into the soil, provide organic fertilizer for the young wheat stalks.
• Spray a small wheat plot lightly with water to stabilize the soil crust. Large acreage is not watered and depends upon rain for germination.
• Wheat fields are not irrigated.

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