During the last week, Dotson said, the stalks of the white Sonora wheat have grown another 5 inches, and the heads, where the wheat berries grow, are starting to form. We planted White Sonora in October because it is a winter wheat. The introduction of wheat allowed indigenous farmers to produce two crops per year. He starts with dumping the uncleaned wheat into a sack or heavy pillowcase – heads, chaff and remainder of stems – all of it. This is in part due to its exquisite flavor and delicate texture as well as the rise in local food movements. You can broadcast seed a plot by hand and rake the soil over to lightly cover the seeds, so additional equipment isn’t needed for most home gardeners. We wanted to try our hand at growing something new this winter. This is fairly typical return with wheat, it should be in the range of about 40:1, meaning if you plant 1 oz. With all of its advantages, flavor and nutrition, ease of growth and harvest, along with being adapted to dry climates and improving the soil, it is easy to see why White Sonora Wheat is regaining its rightful popularity! I would harvest enough seed to plant again the next year and let the chickens self harvest the rest of the wheat. Hi Pretty good harvest from a 3 oz. Your email address will not be published. Wheat was a perfect complement to traditional summer monsoon Tohono O’odham and Pima crops of corn, beans, and squash. This isn’t a pounding action, and he tries not to hit through to the bottom of the sack, only gently thumping the top and going down about halfway into the wheat. More details about planting Sonoran varieties can be found at the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. I know the harvesting isn’t where much expense would be incurred but I am curious as to the equipment required to plant it. It is an early variety with 90 days to maturity when planted in the spring, but it also performs well as a winter wheat where freezing temperatures are not the norm. Introduced in the early 1700s by Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino to the Sonoran region of Mexico and Southern Arizona, White Sonora Wheat was the This seems to be pretty typical from the feedback we are hearing. We will post some of your photos soon. Please reload CAPTCHA. Wheat seeds can also be planted in rows, ca. They sent the wheat eastward, into the Midwest and the east coast. Starting in the early 1800s, California planted Sonoran wheat almost exclusively. We grew White Sonora Wheat over winter, and now that it’s May in Southern California, it is time to harvest. They key is to have mature grain harvested in May and early June before the onset of the summer rains. Here are the results! During the Civil War, much Sonoran wheat was exported from Arizona and California to the eastern states making up for lost production due to the war. Please reload CAPTCHA. The plants are certainly frost tolerant so do not worry about light frosts and even light snow accumulation. After a few minutes of friction, this is what the wheat berries look like – very much the same as what comes out of the combine, but with some stalks and stems in the mix. Compared to hard red winter wheats, these have lower protein content and a soft starch structure that makes them easier to grind. These are whole unmilled White Sonora Wheat berries received directly from Ramona American Indian Farms in Arizona.. White Sonora Wheat is considered to be the oldest wheat in the Americas. By the 1800’s much of the wheat produced by the O’odham and Pima was being sold at market. White Sonora wheat is still used today in Mexican and Southwestern cuisine to make tortillas, a variety of breads, and for its wheat-berries which provide substance to salads and soups. An early spring variety that does equally well as a winter wheat in milder winter climates that doesn't freeze hard. Ramona and her family are growing wheat, along with Pima varieties of tepary beans and corn, in the same soils where her community has for hundreds of years. Large plots can be planted with a seeding rate of 70 to 100 pounds per acre depending upon soil conditions and seeding method. These varieties are often taller than modern, conventional varieties and can naturally shade out weeds, can produce in dryland fields where irrigation water is not used, and are better adapted to the growing climate of the Southwest. That said, Southern California weather doesn’t really allow for winter wheat to act like winter wheat, which ordinarily grows low and wide in fall, then goes dormant in winter, then emerges and branches out in spring to maturity. Rough conversion calculation shows a pound of wheat should return about 1/2 bushel on harvest. When we recently visited our grower, we were shown a large bag of the wheat that had just been harvested, with no other cleaning or sorting. I harvested about 1/2 gallon of this wheat this season. Several factors contributed to its demise as the staple variety of wheat, from expanded cattle ranching in Mexico, the droughts and loss of water as a power source in the 1950s, the closing of many flour mills in Sonora in the mid-1960s, the Green Revolution with its hybridized wheat varieties and the switch from wheat production to vegetables as dams closed off the rivers in northern Mexico. Therefore, wheat quickly became part of O’odham cuisine. But what matters most to Emma and Jeff Zimmerman, is that both a heritage grain and a network of cooperation and innovation have grown. The flour makes a stretchy dough perfect for tortilla making, but it is also of value for bakers and brewers where the lasting sweet flavor and nutty texture is favored. Because it is a white wheat, not a hard red wheat, it makes lighter products that have a sweeter and lighter flavor than those typically associated with whole wheat. White Sonora Wheat is enjoying a resurgence of popularity today all across the country, thanks to restoration efforts in Arizona and South Carolina. }, https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/White-Sonora-Wheat-Head.jpg, https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TerroirSeedsNEWWebLogo3-300x69.jpg, White Sonora Wheat – Perfect Grain for the Home Gardener. Any help/suggestions you have would be appreciated. If birds eating the seed may be a problem, cover with a thin layer of straw. I got interested in planting Sonora wheat as an addition to our ever growing garden. White Sonora is an heirloom bread wheat that was introduced into North America by Spanish and Italian missionaries under the broad category of “candeal cereals” suited for making communion bread. Grain that has been partially dried and then moistened is difficult to harvest, by hand or mechanically, and prone to mold. Higher elevations and cooler regions should plant in the month of February. I include White Sonora on my list of heirloom wheat varieties because I’ve heard so many other people swoon over its heirloom-ness.