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Post by atash on Oct 21, 2010 16:08:09 GMT -5
Most of you are unlikely to know what this is, though some of you may know it as syrup or as animal fodder. Some of you might know it as "Milo".
It's a big tropical grass from Africa that bears a passing resemblance to maize ("Indian corn"), except that instead of any "ears", there is a seedhead at the top that contains small roundish grains.
If the grains are white, then they are fairly palatable to humans. If "red" (more like reddish brown), then they contain too much tannin and humans find them bitter.
It has nutritional levels comparable to maize/corn, and similar yields, but it is potentially significantly easier to grow, having wider tolerances for temperature and moisture levels. It recovers from both flooding and drought better than maize can, and is less likely to die of either one.
Relatively short, fast-maturing varieties, because of their tolerances and quickness to bear, can bear a crop in seasons that are cut short by either cold or drought., where maize would fail. It is also much easier to grow than rice, having wider climactic tolerances.
The grain can be ground into a flour, mixed it with chickpea flour, and use the mixture as a protein-balanced, totally non-glutenous pastry flour, for pancakes, muffins, and cookies.
You can also grind it coarsely to use as porridge.
A fairly popular use for the whole plant is to squeeze the sap out and boil it down into a syrup. Being a fast-growing tropical grass it is high in sugar and is the source of sorghum syrup which some people mistakenly refer to as "molasses". Molasses is a different substance, the sticky dark brown almost black substance that is a byproduct of cane sugar refinement. Blackstrap molasses is a good source of calcium and iron (the iron coming from the steel containers it's processed in, not the sugar cane itself oddly enough!), but it has a strong and somewhat bitter taste whereas sorghum syrup is just mellow and sweet.
Usually grain varieties and syrup varieties are different varieties, but it is possible to extract syrup from grain varieties. Supposedly you can even have your cake and eat it too but I imagine the sugar level drops as the grain ripens.
Are any of you interested in this grain? The reason I am asking is because I have been investigating it, and because it is not generally grown by amateurs despite being seemingly well-suited to small scale production, it is available only in rather large quantities. The seed is almost certainly treated so we can't just eat the excess.
Think of it as having similar uses to dent corn but being easier to grow, and possibilities for syrup. The grains are smaller than corn though so consider that. It is popular with birds including chickens, being a nice size for them to process. I don't think it needs to be cracked for them but not sure about this. Personally, I have human food in mind because of the demand for non-glutinous cereals for human consumption.
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Post by DarJones on Oct 21, 2010 16:45:42 GMT -5
Grain Sorghum is widely grown here in the Southeastern U.S. and up through the Midwest. It is mostly used as animal feed though it can be processed into meal and flour for human use. As you mentioned it is gluten free and therefore of use to people with gluten allergies. Don't expect to find it in stores though some health food stores carry it. Grain sorghum can be fed whole to birds including chickens because they have a gizzard to digest it. For all other feed purposes, it should be either cracked or ground.
I grow small amounts of sorghum varieties adapted for making syrup, but I am growing them to produce seed for planting. These are types that get 6 to 10 feet tall and do not produce seed large enough to be worth the effort of harvesting for grain. You mention that sorghum does not produce true molasses, but here where I live, sorghum syrup is widely known as molasses. In fact, if you presented people here with real molasses, they would look at it funny because it would not be what they are used to eating.
DarJones
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Post by spacecase0 on Oct 21, 2010 17:59:08 GMT -5
I have test grown some this year, it did very well and really want to grow more next year, I got quite a few types in the last few months, as far as eating it, I have been boiling it whole, it has the texture of plastic and is sweet when cooked that way, and I don't mind having what seems like sweet plastic for a meal, but you mentioned "non-glutenous pastry flour, for pancakes, muffins, and cookies." how do you make cookies form it ? or pancakes ? or muffins ? I really want to how to cook it that way, do I just trade out the wheat flower in a recipe and use the sorghum, or is it more complex than that ?
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Post by mjc on Oct 21, 2010 19:17:33 GMT -5
I grew Honey Drip this year, mainly to get some seed stock. It has a medium sized kernel, not all that much smaller than the typical sorghum grain found in birdseed or scratch grains.
Honey Drip is a 'syrup' variety...but it is also an older one, that some of the sources I've read, seem to refer to as what I'd call an 'all purpose' variety...grain, syrup and fodder/silage.
Making syrup is not really any more involved than making maple syrup, especially if you have a good way of chopping the stalks. One method I saw, involved the use of a leaf shredder/chipper and a cider press. The left over from the pressing can be used as animal feed or composted. So, in general, it is a very useful crop and yes it is one of the more easily dealt with grains on a small scale, although most grains can be handled by small growers/gardeners...it doesn't really take all that much ground to grow a bushel or so of most grains.
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Post by ozarklady on Oct 21, 2010 23:03:57 GMT -5
What else do you make molasses out of if not sorghum? Blackstrap is medicine, not molasses! Yuck!
I have Honey drip and Black amber sorghum seeds on hand.
I was not aware that you could use the grain as flour even in the syrup types.
Due to the drought this year, many projects, just were not attempted and sorghum is one of them.
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Post by raymondo on Oct 22, 2010 5:56:49 GMT -5
What else do you make molasses out of if not sorghum? Blackstrap is medicine, not molasses! Yuck! In Australia, or at least in the state where I'm from, molasses is thick, black, mildly bitter and is made from sugar cane. As atash mentioned above, it is a by-product of sugar from sugar cane manufacture. Molasses from sorghum is not known here. It might be something worth looking into.
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Post by ottawagardener on Oct 22, 2010 6:28:35 GMT -5
I'm very interested in growing sorghum because we use it for baking as my youngest doesn't eat gluten. I have some seeds of a popping variety too. Can't wait to try it next year. Of course, it will have to put up with our shorter growing season.
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Post by garnetmoth on Oct 22, 2010 6:35:55 GMT -5
I had a 4 foot non-lodging grain come up from our chicken scratch- i never got around to replanting it- probably not enough to bother to clean for feeding-
is the sorghum in scratch likely GMO? Ill only have a few square feet, but id trial some here happily! Im looking forward to a little stand of grain amaranth next year too.
oh, and here molasses is the bitter stuff from cane sugar, but sorghum syrup was available in i think KY and in TN
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Post by Walk on Oct 22, 2010 9:18:05 GMT -5
We grow Dwarf Grain Sorghum #25 which was from the SSE Heritage Farm collection. The plants look like small corn, and the seed head tops out at about 4'-5' max. We grow this for flour production only. We have bees to provide us with honey, although we do like sorghum syrup.
There still is some commercial production of sorghum for pressing in southern Wisconsin, so there are varieties that will do well in our area. A neighbor used to do sorghum syrup and used an antique roller press to crush and squeeze the stalks - until he crushed his hand and took off one of his fingers. Needless to say, that was the last year of sorghum from his farm.
The Dwarf Grain Sorghum was one of 2 varieties that we trialed for flour production. The other variety also grew well but had dark seeds and tasted awful as Atash mentioned. Even the birds avoided it. That being said, the trick with the good tasting varieties is to harvest as soon as the birds start feeding on it and finish the drying in a greenhouse or sun room.
As for cooking, we mix sorghum flour with other grains like amaranth, buckwheat, rice, and oats. If coarsely ground it resembles corn meal.
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Post by mjc on Oct 22, 2010 10:48:15 GMT -5
is the sorghum in scratch likely GMO? Ill only have a few square feet, but id trial some here happily! Im looking forward to a little stand of grain amaranth next year too. No, sorghum is not a GMO crop...I don't know of any modified sorghums on the market, although I'm sure there may be some in development, somewhere. They aren't in the distribution channels. Also, if you can grow any of the 100+ day corns, you can grow sorghum...many of the straight grain types are fairly fast, compared to corn. They will dry down quicker. When saving seed, for planting it is best to let them dry as long as possible on the stalk, but for feed they can be harvested earlier and dried indoors/under cover. One of the dangers of growing sorghum, for seed as opposed to feed, is that you can suffer large losses due to birds. When the seed is naturally dry enough it is also most desirable to birds. Another interesting note, for me, this year, my Honey Drip was sweetest (yes, it is sweet enough that you can actually cut a section of the stalk and suck the juice out) right around the milk stage, which is slightly later than most say it should be (flowering before seed development). It also retained that sweetness right up until the end...maybe dropped a little, but it was still much sweeter than earlier. As to yield, I would have ended up with nearly 1 qt of seed from about a 20 ft row...but actually had a little bit more than half that as a final yield, once threshed because about half ended up feeding the birds (the heads were half picked bare). That happened nearly overnight...basically, it was close one day, but it rained that afternoon and evening and by the next afternoon, when everything had dried out, about half of what was there had become bird food. I didn't harvest it the previous day, because it was still wet with the morning dew...and I didn't really get a chance to before the rain moved in.
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Post by greenfinger on Oct 22, 2010 11:56:31 GMT -5
Please describe your threshing method. Rubbing between my hands is a bit tedious... I have done 1 1/2 pounds, maybe 1 quart? I planted one 75 foot row, lost a bit to birds, but I'm only a quarter of the way done threshing. Mine was in the garden being watered with a sprinkler. It grew 10 feet tall. One plant is over 12 feet. It was "white popping sorghum" from sampleseeds.com
We grow Dwarf Grain Sorghum #25 which was from the SSE Heritage Farm collection. The plants look like small corn, and the seed head tops out at about 4'-5' max. We grow this for flour production only. We have bees to provide us with honey, although we do like sorghum syrup.
WALK, How would you compare the yield of mine to your yield? It hurts my feelings a bit to use all the nutrients in the soil to produce such tall stalks.
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Post by rockguy on Oct 22, 2010 13:30:46 GMT -5
Very little of the stalks is actually nutrients from the soil. They are mostly CO2, water and carbohydrates- made from sunshine.
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Post by ottawagardener on Oct 22, 2010 14:44:57 GMT -5
Anyone interested in some seeds from M6-1 Perennial Sorghum from Bountiful Gardens? They are a little older but I won't be growing them (or many at least) this year.
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Post by mjc on Oct 22, 2010 15:00:19 GMT -5
For the initial phase, I put it all in an old feed sack and then let the kids 'dance' on it. Then hand rubbed what was left...
I'm looking into some sort of small grain threshing machine, for next year...a leaf shredder based one, probably...but whatever modifications would have to be temporary in nature, so I could use it for chopping the stalks for syrup making.
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Post by johno on Oct 22, 2010 15:13:23 GMT -5
Anyone interested in some seeds from M6-1 Perennial Sorghum from Bountiful Gardens? They are a little older but I won't be growing them (or many at least) this year. I am!
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