Cue the Freakout: 'Coffee Rust' Hitting Hard

[KRonn]

Looks like I'll have to add a coffee crop to my backyard garden.  In between the corn and potatoes should work nicely.   

[mongers]

Looks like I'll have to add a coffee crop to my backyard garden.  In between the corn and potatoes should work nicely.   

Really?

Does it require much effort; I know there's a enthusiasm here for some people to grow wheat in their own gardens and it's a shed-load of work for not much reward.

[Valmy]

It's sheep they've been getting all boozed up lately:

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Watchdog-group-A-M-researchers-are-doing-strange-5466137.php

Watchdog group: A&M researchers are doing strange things to sheep

Pffft A&M has been doing strange things to sheep for over a century.

[KRonn]

Looks like I'll have to add a coffee crop to my backyard garden.  In between the corn and potatoes should work nicely.   

Really?

Does it require much effort; I know there's a enthusiasm here for some people to grow wheat in their own gardens and it's a shed-load of work for not much reward.

Corn grows very nicely, one of the better crops I grow and I love the way it looks in my garden.      I have about a hundred plants that I just planted last weekend. I love picking an ear or two off the plant for lunch or dinner to have it fresh off the stalk! I usually get enough to freeze some to eat over the winter. I boil it for a couple minutes, then douse it in ice water, let it dry a bit and freeze it. That keeps most of the taste in and it still tastes great in mid-winter. Wheat sounds interesting and fun to grow but I would think that requires some processing to get the food from it.

The biggest problem I've had is varmints raiding the corn, mainly woodchucks and squirrels. Woodchucks will eat a half dozen or more ears of corn in a day. A squirrel will take one by shaking the stalk until the ear comes off, then run to a tree to eat it. Racoons are tough but fortunately I haven't had any raccoons around.

I and a neighbor trapped the resident woodchuck that lived under the neighbor's shed two years ago so for now that threat is gone. And last year I trapped the two squirrels that were raiding. So we'll see for this year. So far no woodchucks and squirrels are pretty easy to trap. Woodchucks not so easy.

[mongers]

Looks like I'll have to add a coffee crop to my backyard garden.  In between the corn and potatoes should work nicely.   

Really?

Does it require much effort; I know there's a enthusiasm here for some people to grow wheat in their own gardens and it's a shed-load of work for not much reward.

Corn grows very nicely, one of the better crops I grow and I love the way it looks in my garden.      I have about a hundred plants that I just planted last weekend. I love picking an ear or two off the plant for lunch or dinner to have it fresh off the stalk! I usually get enough to freeze some to eat over the winter. I boil it for a couple minutes, then douse it in ice water, let it dry a bit and freeze it. That keeps most of the taste in and it still tastes great in mid-winter. Wheat sounds interesting and fun to grow but I would think that requires some processing to get the food from it.

The biggest problem I've had is varmints raiding the corn, mainly woodchucks and squirrels. Woodchucks will eat a half dozen or more ears of corn in a day. A squirrel will take one by shaking the stalk until the ear comes off, then run to a tree to eat it. Racoons are tough but fortunately I haven't had any raccoons around.

I and a neighbor trapped the resident woodchuck that lived under the neighbor's shed two years ago so for now that threat is gone. And last year I trapped the two squirrels that were raiding. So we'll see for this year. So far no woodchucks and squirrels are pretty easy to trap. Woodchucks not so easy.

Excellent, rather nice setup you've got there. 

Yeah, wheat doesn't take way too much effort, especially compared with farmers who can get around 10 tons an acre.

I wonder what people who do this garden wheat growing think they're gonna get from their 6ftx7ft patch*?


edit:

doing some maths and assuming their organic wheat gets half the yield of top farmers, that'll be about 6.5kgs of grain, assuming no losses in process or to crittes, so maybe 4 standard bags of wholemeal flour. 

[Capetan Mihali]

Corn's pretty different though, mongers, since I'm sure we're talking about sweet corn -- a vegetable for practical purposes, ready to eat right away alongside any other garden vegetable.  Not the kind of corn that would have to be milled into flour, a la wheat.  Which is a pretty odd garden crop, I agree.

[mongers]

Corn's pretty different though, mongers, since I'm sure we're talking about sweet corn -- a vegetable for practical purposes, ready to eat right away alongside any other garden vegetable.  Not the kind of corn that would have to be milled into flour, a la wheat.  Which is a pretty odd garden crop, I agree.

Oh I know the difference between US and English usage of corn. 

Seems like a nice idea, we may be warming up enough here for it to feasible in gardens. Not that we don't grow it here in the 'far south' on a few farms, but it often looks pretty pitiful in the fields and probably requires a lot of inputs.

[KRonn]

So your farmers don't grow much corn? It doesn't grow well? I figured it was pretty adaptable. I'm in New England and this is also a temperate climate but summer is long enough and warm/hot enough for corn. I'd think the same would be for England.

[mongers]

So your farmers don't grow much corn? It doesn't grow well? I figured it was pretty adaptable. I'm in New England and this is also a temperate climate but summer is long enough and warm/hot enough for corn. I'd think the same would be for England.

It's not a huge amount, but I'll check.

Incidentally I think much of it is animal feed, rather than humans.



edit:
Yeah, it's not a great deal, according to this article it's around 100,000 hectares, so just 1/4 million acres as opposed to the tens of million in the US.

http://www.ukagriculture.com/crops/forage_maize.cfm

Here it has become an important crop being the most important forage after grass with around 100,000 hectares grown annually, mainly in the south of the country

.


edit 2:
And as the article mentions we're so far north here, we don't have the strong summer sun to bring the crop along, just as why we have to mix in Canadian and US wheat into our flour to give it the necessary strength to make good bread.

[KRonn]

Interesting, and yeah, England is much further north than here in New England so even though it may be warm the sun isn't so strong. I hadn't thought of that; makes sense.

In the US also a lot of corn is grown for animal feed and also for ethanol. I'm guessing those two uses probably rival the amount of corn grown for human consumption.

[Admiral Yi]

Pretty sure only a tiny fraction of the US corn crop is consumed by humans.

[KRonn]

Pretty sure only a tiny fraction of the US corn crop is consumed by humans.

That may be. I saw a map, not sure where, of corn grown and it seemed to show a lot of areas for non-human consumption as opposed to fewer for human use. Hmm... good thing I grow my own!  But of course there's still an abundance of corn for various human uses.

[mongers]

So your farmers don't grow much corn? It doesn't grow well? I figured it was pretty adaptable. I'm in New England and this is also a temperate climate but summer is long enough and warm/hot enough for corn. I'd think the same would be for England.

Indeed the one field of maize I recall passing last year looked pretty pathetic as compared to what you seen in films of the US or no doubt your home grown.

edit:
reading more of that website I linked to, only 2,500 hectares is grown for human consumption, compared to the 100,000 for forage.   

[The Brain]

Corn.

[mongers]

Pretty sure only a tiny fraction of the US corn crop is consumed by humans.

It's greater than 10%, also not sure how you'd divide up Export in terms of human consumption or what residuals means.

There's a somewhat confusing table here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States

Production

The total production of corn in the US for the year 2013-14 is reported to be 13.016 billion bushels of which the major use is for manufacture of ethanol and its co-product (Distillers' Dried Grains with Solubles) accounting for 37% (27% + 10%) or 4,845 million bushels (3,552 + 1,293). The other uses are given in the table.[10]Uses of Corn/Maize

Type   Production (Million Bushels)   Percentage
Ethanol   3552   27
DDGS   1293   10
Other processing*   1420   11
Exports   1450   11
Residual use   1055   8
Dairy   823   6
Beef cattle   1213   9
Hogs   1004   8
Poultry   1205   9
Other animals   100   1
Total   13016   100
Million Bushels & Percenatge.[10]

'Other processing' includes the production of High Fructose Corn Syrup, sweeteners, starch, beverage alcohol, and

cereals.[11]