Buy Certified Organic Barley for Cover Crop and Grain Production

Barley is a cereal grain derived from the annual grass Hordeum vulgare. Barley serves as a major animal feed crop, with smaller amounts used for malting (mostly for beer and certain distilled beverages) and in health food. It is used in soups, stews and barley bread in various countries, such as Scotland and in Africa and now quite frequently in the US. It's just good food.

Download a Planting Guide including lbs per acre chart by clicking here.

Robust is a 6 row barley with semi-smooth awns that is classified as a malting barley for making beer and other booze! Valuable as feed, excellent as a spring cover crop and grain for harvest. Produces the most biomass of any grain and outcompetes weeds very effectively. Thrives on well-drained fertile soil but tolerates drought and alkaline or heavy soils. Undersow with clover or a legume/grass mix for soil building.

It is medium in maturity and yield and has good lodging resistance and kernal plumpness. Robust is resistant to spot blotch.

$72.00

High yield and medium maturity. Good lodging resistance and kernal plumpness. Six-rowed, semi-smooth awns, short rachilla hairs, and colorless aleurone.

• Maximum yield is always obtained from crops established in good conditions. Spring Barley does not behave like Winter Wheat, so seed rates used at early drilling should not be reduced to the same degree. Spring Barley variety choice for early drilling will depend on the ability of that variety to resist early disease pressure and overcome problems such as pest attack from slugs, leather jackets and wheat bulb fly.
• Late sown crops (after 1st April) will not tiller so freely, so seed rates should be increased by 10-15% to overcome this. Also, higher seed rates used with late sown crops should reduce some of the problems of late secondary tillering which can reduce grading (production of small grains).
• Rolling
  • The firming of seedbeds by rolling directly after drilling is standard practice. Care should be taken on land prone to capping by delaying rolling until after emergence to avoid problems which would otherwise delay emergence and reduce tillering.
• The optimum seeding rate for Arizona and other similar climates is about 120 lbs/acre for barley, 135 lbs/acre for wheat, and 150 lbs/acre for durum. The optimum seeding rate of barley is less than durum because barley produces more tillers and has more seeds per pound. The optimum seeding rate of wheat is less than durum because wheat has more seeds per pound than durum.
• Rates for midwestern type climates is approximately 1.5 to 2.0 bushels per acre (65 to 90 pounds per acre). Determining the number of seeds per pound and germination rates provides a far more accurate seeding rate. The desired plant population is 1.25 to 1.30 million plants per acre, or approximately 30 plants per square foot.

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