I grew a couple varieties, 2 years ago I think. 🤔 What I learned. The seed can be saved and it will germinate for about a decade which is crazy awesome. It's gluten free. Sorghum syrup is made from the green juice of the sorghum plant much like maple syrup or cane sugar, its extracted from the crushed stalks and then heated to steam off the excess water, leaving the syrup behind. You can pop it like pop corn. It's just smaller. I think you can make booze and fuel from it. My plants looked like corn/sugar cane/millet etc. Grinding, rolling dry or steam, flaking and popping seem to be the methods to get past the bran and into the digestible stuff. I heard it can be used as an early fall cover crop that the frost kills and then it can be tilled in. I think I would like to try that at some point. I am up here in eastern Ontario and that is a USDA 4 I think. Grew over 10 feet tall here. Recipes for me are not really what I have found in abundance. It's more of a just throw it in stuff and see how it tastes kind of method. It's kinda nutty like hemp seed but it's own flavor of course. I use it as a flour or in porridge, smoothies, muffins, cookies, breads, granola, soups, curries, stews, etc. Just do one of those searches for the top 25 sorghum recipes and some good stuff will come of it. ☺
I'm pretty sure that I got some millet seed to grow I'd like to know if it's related to these and also how edible? They were volunteers from wild bird seed.
The Sudan grass I grew last year proved more frost hardy than I expected. I still have some standing clumps. Great stuff! The birds were landing on the stalks and eating the little black seeds deep into winter.
Absolutely loved this one! For the Sorghum, the rule is the lighter the seed color, the less tannin they will have, and thus more digestible/higher food value. The Sudan grass looks very impressive. Please share a video on the complete start-to-finish processing of the dried seed, to the finished food/bread/cereal, or whatever Sasha makes from it?
The great blessing of working within nature's systems: plant seed. Forget about it. Result = food for humans, food for other creatures. so much lost wisdom being re-discovered. thank you. And blessings for your family
If you get to Geneva Dennis Ferlito at Bejo Seeds test farms is an absolute treasure trove of vegetable , soil , plant , commercial farming. Local muck farmers generational family. Pioneered many things with Cornell now with Bejo worldwide. I worked for their family several years. They do open house of the plots and grounds in spring. Wonderful event.
I’m glad you opened up this topic. I don’t have a lot of space, but I’d love to plant something to provide chicken feed and/or fodder for my rabbits. I purchased some sorghum seeds but never got them planted this year. 🤣Love the fact that you forgot all about one crop….now THAT is “abundance” right there! Looking forward to responses on this topic 👍🏻
I remember sorghum syrup in the south when I was was a kid. I have no idea how it is made. It has a complex sweet, rich, slightly bitter flavor. I enjoy it.
Love that your delving into this. We grew a popping sorghum here for the first time last year. Popping attempts were not great but I think I dried it too much dues to mold concerns. I think it’s a great crop because some only can some be popped but also ground into flour, alternative sweetener and even chicken food, we already sprout whole locally sourced sorghum as well as corn and wheat to our hens and experimented with the extra seed and b grade stuff. Sprouted great and we’re able to feed them for several weeks off this supply. Still working with this and scaling up while looking to add snap pea seed into a similar trial for future sprouts for the hens and early spring/ summer food for us. Happy trials I will say the longer stringy looks ones look more like my sorghum while the chunky bud looking ones look strange to me. Never grown Sudan grass
I had some popcorn that was too dry to pop. I put it in a quart canning jar, added a tablespsooon of water, and shook it. A day later, I got a much improved pop rate. Maybe this would work with your dry sorghum seed.
We used to cover crop mucks here in Oswego with Sudan to penetrate hard pan crust from compaction. We chopped it for cattle fodder but it can’t be frozen or it is bad for them. If it gets too big it is hard to cut for forage. Very aggressive growth.
Really interesting this is just what we were thinking of doing after pigs to build soil & feed chickens & ducks & look better than grass with chicory & sunflowers .you made me think peas would work well too . We want to attract birds & insects too 😊
I think something like that is growing in my garden as well. It's under the place where I have the bird feeder in winter and I left it there so that they can have it again.
I can get sorghum grain at the local Indian grocery store, it's called jowar. It's a great way to experiment with it before you get any major harvests. I've nixtamalized it before, that turned out really well. Also have been growing the cultivar "coral", it is very easy to separate from the stalk. I've had trouble growing it reliably here in SE Michigan. It's worked well if I start it indoors but when I tried to sow a patch in ground it didn't ripen in time. Also had problems with it blowing over. The stalks can also be used to harvest some syrup even in the grain varieties, though they're much smaller.
I grew that sudan grass a couple of years back, we had a good harvest. Interestingly it was sold to me as 'black sorghum seed' but it was definitely what you had in that video, possibly some cultural confusion on seed names. I would love to grow white sorghum as a food stuff for us so I'll have to get back on the hunt for those seeds. By the way don't assume that will 'melt' into the ground come the first frost, mine hung around until I pulled it out of the ground the next year albeit the roots had well rotted etc, the stalks pulled out easy.
Next year plant earlier , the seed pods aren’t ready yet . To speed growing of seed pods cut plant 3 inches from top of plant before buds form , will cause growth spurt .
I grew a plot of sorgum sudan grass last year as a cover crop. The soil was so poor the grass only got to about 3-4 feet tall. This year, the spot is in a slightly better place due to that, but I was disappointed in it initially. Im going to try again...
Ive experimented with Red and Black Broom Corn for many years. In the last 2 years, I've been growing Allu Jola (popping) and Ba Yi Qi (red milo type). I'm currently trying to hybridize these and reselect out of the crossing. The bigger seed one you call "sorghum" in the video looks more like a popping variety to me as it has big seeds. Most of the other ones look like broom corn types. Sorghum bicolor is an amazingly diverse with 4 or 5 main types; durra, caudatum, guinea and kafir and bicolor. I've usually feed most of it to the chickens, but I also use some mixed in to cornbread.
Animal food…Chickens eat it, if they have to, my goats fight for it! Some varieties are completely harvested by birds, but I have found a black variety they don’t touch. Super important for me during Mediterranean summer, when their is not much for my goats to eat…
The goal as far as the human foods goes should be to eat foods that are water rich not dried out from cooking. We are supposed to be 70% water but most of us are dehydrated and by our 50s are only 55% water. I would be more excited about some greens or berries that you might be able to grow year round and eat fresh/raw or at worst lightly steamed or boiled. The grains I would use purely as a survival food which is really what grains are best for - contrary to what we've been taught by the government created "food pyramid".
I mostly agree with you, but we still need some 'bulk' in our diets. A great way to make grains a little less 'dry' is to soak them about 40 hours in just enough water to thoroughly expand them, then carefully wet-grind them into a 'sprouted flour'. If they showed a little fermenting/bubbles after soaking so long, this is a good thing as it helps neutralize the phytic acid inherent in grains. Then, once ground, the stuff can be shaped into round relatively flat loaves, baked at a LOW temperature (under 200F), and POOF, you are in for a really moist, chewy, and maximally nutritious bread, that needs zero salt/oil/yeast, or anything else added!
I grew a couple varieties, 2 years ago I think. 🤔 What I learned. The seed can be saved and it will germinate for about a decade which is crazy awesome. It's gluten free. Sorghum syrup is made from the green juice of the sorghum plant much like maple syrup or cane sugar, its extracted from the crushed stalks and then heated to steam off the excess water, leaving the syrup behind. You can pop it like pop corn. It's just smaller. I think you can make booze and fuel from it. My plants looked like corn/sugar cane/millet etc. Grinding, rolling dry or steam, flaking and popping seem to be the methods to get past the bran and into the digestible stuff. I heard it can be used as an early fall cover crop that the frost kills and then it can be tilled in. I think I would like to try that at some point. I am up here in eastern Ontario and that is a USDA 4 I think. Grew over 10 feet tall here.
Recipes for me are not really what I have found in abundance. It's more of a just throw it in stuff and see how it tastes kind of method. It's kinda nutty like hemp seed but it's own flavor of course. I use it as a flour or in porridge, smoothies, muffins, cookies, breads, granola, soups, curries, stews, etc. Just do one of those searches for the top 25 sorghum recipes and some good stuff will come of it. ☺
I'm pretty sure that I got some millet seed to grow I'd like to know if it's related to these and also how edible? They were volunteers from wild bird seed.
The Sudan grass I grew last year proved more frost hardy than I expected. I still have some standing clumps. Great stuff! The birds were landing on the stalks and eating the little black seeds deep into winter.
Absolutely loved this one! For the Sorghum, the rule is the lighter the seed color, the less tannin they will have, and thus more digestible/higher food value. The Sudan grass looks very impressive. Please share a video on the complete start-to-finish processing of the dried seed, to the finished food/bread/cereal, or whatever Sasha makes from it?
The great blessing of working within nature's systems: plant seed. Forget about it. Result = food for humans, food for other creatures. so much lost wisdom being re-discovered. thank you. And blessings for your family
Thanks so kindly!
I’m a big fan of the Sudan grass and the chickens really enjoy the seeds.
If you get to Geneva Dennis Ferlito at Bejo Seeds test farms is an absolute treasure trove of vegetable , soil , plant , commercial farming.
Local muck farmers generational family. Pioneered many things with Cornell now with Bejo worldwide. I worked for their family several years. They do open house of the plots and grounds in spring. Wonderful event.
I’m glad you opened up this topic. I don’t have a lot of space, but I’d love to plant something to provide chicken feed and/or fodder for my rabbits. I purchased some sorghum seeds but never got them planted this year. 🤣Love the fact that you forgot all about one crop….now THAT is “abundance” right there! Looking forward to responses on this topic 👍🏻
I’m from SC & we have a pole bean heirloom that looks just like that. The old man I got them from called them ‘Epting green bean’
Love this grass. We had Rosella's birds eating the seed. Great food source for birds. They dried off in winter and now regrowing from roots.
I remember sorghum syrup in the south when I was was a kid. I have no idea how it is made. It has a complex sweet, rich, slightly bitter flavor. I enjoy it.
Love that your delving into this. We grew a popping sorghum here for the first time last year. Popping attempts were not great but I think I dried it too much dues to mold concerns. I think it’s a great crop because some only can some be popped but also ground into flour, alternative sweetener and even chicken food, we already sprout whole locally sourced sorghum as well as corn and wheat to our hens and experimented with the extra seed and b grade stuff. Sprouted great and we’re able to feed them for several weeks off this supply. Still working with this and scaling up while looking to add snap pea seed into a similar trial for future sprouts for the hens and early spring/ summer food for us. Happy trials I will say the longer stringy looks ones look more like my sorghum while the chunky bud looking ones look strange to me. Never grown Sudan grass
I had some popcorn that was too dry to pop. I put it in a quart canning jar, added a tablespsooon of water, and shook it. A day later, I got a much improved pop rate. Maybe this would work with your dry sorghum seed.
We used to cover crop mucks here in Oswego with Sudan to penetrate hard pan crust from compaction.
We chopped it for cattle fodder but it can’t be frozen or it is bad for them.
If it gets too big it is hard to cut for forage. Very aggressive growth.
Really interesting this is just what we were thinking of doing after pigs to build soil & feed chickens & ducks & look better than grass with chicory & sunflowers .you made me think peas would work well too . We want to attract birds & insects too 😊
I think something like that is growing in my garden as well. It's under the place where I have the bird feeder in winter and I left it there so that they can have it again.
I can get sorghum grain at the local Indian grocery store, it's called jowar. It's a great way to experiment with it before you get any major harvests. I've nixtamalized it before, that turned out really well. Also have been growing the cultivar "coral", it is very easy to separate from the stalk. I've had trouble growing it reliably here in SE Michigan. It's worked well if I start it indoors but when I tried to sow a patch in ground it didn't ripen in time. Also had problems with it blowing over. The stalks can also be used to harvest some syrup even in the grain varieties, though they're much smaller.
Good to know that Sorghum will grow in our colder zone. I plan on growing some next year for animal feed.
You can press the cane for syrup also.
you should do a video of a map of your setup.....kinda wonder how the whole system is organized
maybe get a drone and get some aerial footage involved
I grew that sudan grass a couple of years back, we had a good harvest. Interestingly it was sold to me as 'black sorghum seed' but it was definitely what you had in that video, possibly some cultural confusion on seed names. I would love to grow white sorghum as a food stuff for us so I'll have to get back on the hunt for those seeds. By the way don't assume that will 'melt' into the ground come the first frost, mine hung around until I pulled it out of the ground the next year albeit the roots had well rotted etc, the stalks pulled out easy.
Interesting notes here, thank you!
The old 1970s book by the late great Gene Logsdon, Small Scale Grain Raising, is worth hunting for.
A quick glace and it is quickly valuable info
Next year plant earlier , the seed pods aren’t ready yet . To speed growing of seed pods cut plant 3 inches from top of plant before buds form , will cause growth spurt .
❤
Sorghum seed are called Great Millet.
Some sorghum seeds sprout while still on the stalks. When is the right time to harvest them. God bless you MARANATHA
Thanks!
I grew a plot of sorgum sudan grass last year as a cover crop. The soil was so poor the grass only got to about 3-4 feet tall. This year, the spot is in a slightly better place due to that, but I was disappointed in it initially. Im going to try again...
Ive experimented with Red and Black Broom Corn for many years. In the last 2 years, I've been growing Allu Jola (popping) and Ba Yi Qi (red milo type). I'm currently trying to hybridize these and reselect out of the crossing. The bigger seed one you call "sorghum" in the video looks more like a popping variety to me as it has big seeds. Most of the other ones look like broom corn types. Sorghum bicolor is an amazingly diverse with 4 or 5 main types; durra, caudatum, guinea and kafir and bicolor. I've usually feed most of it to the chickens, but I also use some mixed in to cornbread.
Frost doesn’t bother my plants that much. I’ve never tried Sudan grass though
I think a fully seeded out female cannabis plant or six… would provide a lot of nutrition for some birds too
Muck must be a regional term? Does it mean clayey kind of soil?
I think it means organic matter that settles in the bottom of a pond/lake/ditch and decomposes.
Dang it, I forgot to harvest my sorghum, it's all wet now...
Animal food…Chickens eat it, if they have to, my goats fight for it!
Some varieties are completely harvested by birds, but I have found a black variety they don’t touch.
Super important for me during Mediterranean summer, when their is not much for my goats to eat…
Do you feed the stalks and leaves to your animals? They call it 'tree hay'.
We haven't tried that yet, but something to consider for sure
Do the stalks have any significant sweetness like sugar cane or sorghum?
The goal as far as the human foods goes should be to eat foods that are water rich not dried out from cooking. We are supposed to be 70% water but most of us are dehydrated and by our 50s are only 55% water. I would be more excited about some greens or berries that you might be able to grow year round and eat fresh/raw or at worst lightly steamed or boiled. The grains I would use purely as a survival food which is really what grains are best for - contrary to what we've been taught by the government created "food pyramid".
I mostly agree with you, but we still need some 'bulk' in our diets. A great way to make grains a little less 'dry' is to soak them about 40 hours in just enough water to thoroughly expand them, then carefully wet-grind them into a 'sprouted flour'. If they showed a little fermenting/bubbles after soaking so long, this is a good thing as it helps neutralize the phytic acid inherent in grains. Then, once ground, the stuff can be shaped into round relatively flat loaves, baked at a LOW temperature (under 200F), and POOF, you are in for a really moist, chewy, and maximally nutritious bread, that needs zero salt/oil/yeast, or anything else added!
You look like Peter Caine.
“Chunky Nugglet” please name a grain sorghum variety that!
show chickens blyat. weed no interesting. chicks - interesting. so film dem hens.