Farming Barley - With Information on Germination, Yields and Growth of Barley

By Read Books Ltd.

This text contains a detailed guide to barley production on the farm, with information on germination, yields, and growth of barley. Including helpful tables, scientific information, simple instructions, and much more, this text contains all the information one might need to know for the successful and commercially-viable production of barley. It will appeal to to barley farmers as well as collectors of agricultural literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Barley', 'Why Barley is used for Beer', 'Malting a Process of Germination', 'Potash for Perfect Barley', 'Hallriegel's Barley Plants', 'Hellriegel's Perfect Barley Plants', 'Crudeness of Field Practice', 'Importance of Light for Growth', 'Amount of Water Needed', 'Significance of Rain', 'One Reason why Sands are Sterile', etcetera. We are proud to republish this vintage volume, now in an affordable modern edition complete with a new introduction on farming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473354074

Book preview

BARLEY.

BARLEY may well be studied as the first example of a special crop, because it is the most widely distributed of the grains. It has been longer cultivated, perhaps, and more generally cultivated, than any other. The growth of the barley plant has been very carefully investigated withal from the scientific point of view. Barley grows very far to the north, even in Lapland and Iceland. Good crops are got constantly in some localities as high as latitude 70°. It has the great merit that its term of growth is short. And this statement is particularly true of high latitudes, at least as regards sheltered sunny situations not too high above the sea level.

In some Swedish localities barley is said sometimes to ripen in the course of six weeks, and not infrequently in seven or eight weeks. So too in some Norwegian valleys, barley is reaped in favorable years 8 or 9 weeks after the seeds are sown, and it is possible to get two crops in a summer. Indeed, there is a farm in Thelemarken called Triset, which owes its name to the fact that one year three successive barley crops were reaped upon it. In those regions the stalks are often seen to grow two or three inches in a day. Ordinarily, however, the term of growth of the barley crop is some 80 or 90 days, say 13 weeks. Although grown far to the north, barley is not so well able as rye or wheat to live through the winter. Even in New England it is grown as a summer crop, though in countries where the winters are milder varieties of winter barley are sometimes cultivated.

Mention has already been made of the influence of continuous light in hastening the growth of barley in high northern latitudes, and of the remarkable circumstance that the character there impressed upon the crop by its exposure to light through many generations may be retained for a time when the seed is carried to more southern localities. In one experiment, barley that bore ripe grain at Alten (70° N.) 67 days after it was sown, required only 67 days to ripen at Breslau in Germany (51° N.); and an instance is reported where some of the Alten barley sown at Christiania (60° N.) ripened in 55 days, the crop having been somewhat forced, as was supposed, by the warmer climate of Christiania.

Barley has a wide Range.

Barley is still cultivated more frequently in Sweden and Norway than any other grain. As a matter of history, it has been longer cultivated there than any other cereal. It was grown there even earlier than rye. Indeed, the name corn has been applied exclusively to barley by the Northmen from very early times. In Iceland, barley was grown from the time the island was colonized, in 870, till the middle of the fourteenth century, or even as late as the year 1400. After that time, however, the Icelanders appear to have imported their supplies of grain, and not to have grown barley in any systematic way; though in the last century efforts were made to have the old custom revived, and again quite recently. In 1883, barley was reaped at Reykjavik in Iceland 98 days after the seed was sown. The chief difficulty in these northern countries is from severe night frosts when the barley plants are young. Such frosts are often very destructive.

In the year 1880 some 2,660,000 acres of barley were grown in England and Scotland, against 3,000,000 acres of wheat and 49,000 acres of rye.

Barley grows far to the south also as well as at the north, and it is much used for feeding horses in some southern countries. Indeed, it habitually yields two crops each year on the same soil in hot climates. In Sicily the barley sown in autumn ripens in May, and that sown in May ripens before the autumn. In temperate climates barley is much less important nowadays even than rye, when considered merely as a bread crop, but large quantities of it are still grown for the purpose of making beer and malt, and not a little barley is used directly as fodder.

Why Barley is used for Beer.

The reason why barley is used for making beer in preference to the other grains, such as rye, wheat, or maize, is that barley malt contains a larger proportion of certain unorganized ferments, such as diastase and maltin, than malt that has been made from either of the other kinds of grain. In all kinds of starchy seeds the