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Post by blueadzuki on Oct 8, 2015 16:47:21 GMT -5
Hi.
Okay technically no harvest has as yet occurred with my experiment in growing the hard to get type of Job's tears used for grain production (as opposed to the easy to get hard shelled type used for jewelry )
My initial results are, as is the case with most of the stuff I play around with, mixed. That is the results of the actual test to see if they can grown and reproduce actually went very well. Soft-shell Job's tears
1. Grow quite readily once I figured out what I did wrong last time (Job's tears are semi tropical, so can't take the cold of the early spring around here the way barley or wheat can) and how to get around it (for me, plant them in a pot inside and let them get their first few weeks in protected, for someone on a larger scale, either plant them later (on a corn timetable) or cover the field with plastic (I guess). and
2. Have no problem going into reproductive mode here (i.e. no issues with day length, which is always a spectre in growing anything that originates in the sub to full tropics.
However that initial exuberance is tempered a bit by the likelihood my harvest will be quite meagre (well it would have been meagre anyway with how much I planted, but meagre as a percentage of that) due to a problem that I 1. Should have anticipated 2. Can really do nothing about and 3. Most likely leads to a conclusion that I do not like much
Quite simply the problem is space. Like pretty much any grass, Job's tears are wind pollinated, and as such you need a lot of space AND a lot of starter seed to get good pollination. And I had neither. As of this point every seed that has gone yellow, indicating it can be picked (since job's tears are single seeds on independent stalks, it is possible to pick them one by one, rather that having to wait for the whole plant to finish up) has proved to be empty. I suppose that these could all just be abortions, but it is worrisome; as it seems to indicate heavily that pollination was minimal.
As of this point the only seeds I more or less Definitively DO know have grains in them are a couple of weird ones one of the plants put out that have incomplete/ nonexistent shells. But that's like 2-3 out of the whole pot. so not a great base for another crop (especially if what I had now wasn't enough, I can't imagine even LESS will do better)
And of course, it isn't as if I can just go and get more seed to flesh the population out. As you recall when I have mentioned it before, to get soft-shell jobs tears for growing, I have to go to Chinatown and rummage around the bins of jobs tears being sold for seeds that the machine that hulls and polishes them for consumption missed. Outside of one person on SSE, (and possibly some odd accession somewhere on GRIN I don't know about) there are literally NO other sources of soft-shell I know of (barring taking a trip to China and stuffing raw seed in my pocket) . And each year, the machines in China get better at not missing. (On a side note, I also wonder if this method is skewing my base towards seed that is overly slender/undersized, since ipso facto those seeds are going to be the ones the machines misses most often.
And all of this leads to the same depressing answer as I have for pretty much everything else I try to grow; that the right answer in trying to get this plant to reproduce would be to never try to do it myself, and simply hand over any seed I get to other people with better conditions (this isn't a request for takers, just a statement of fact) Probably the truth, but hard to bear, especially when it seems to apply to literally EVERYTHING (the only thing nastier that finding someone is trying to sacrifice you is the knowledge that you might have an obligation to actively seek to sacrifice yourself, that in the grand scheme of give and take, you are stuck in the "give literally everything, take nothing" section)
In short while in all likelihood, soft-shell Job's tears are probably a great crop for this area, but (as Gary Crosby once sung) "But Not for Me".
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 7, 2015 13:56:57 GMT -5
If seed for Job's Tears is being offered, how can you tell whether or not the seed is for grain type or just for beads? I ran across it somewhere in the last few days while looking for something else and wondered..
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 7, 2015 18:13:07 GMT -5
The two don't actually look all that similar (at least the one I find doesn't there are technically a whole heck of a LOT of different job's tear varieties so there could be one out there that is closer)
It's not actually correct to call one "grain type" and one "just for beads". Technically the bead one is just as edible as the grain one (and in fact the grains are a bit bigger) it's just a &*%$^&! to get them OPEN (you basically need pliers or heavy machinery), harder still to do it and keep the kernel in eating condition (Imagine the problem if wheat grains or corn kernels came in a shell like a nut and you have some rough idea.) .
Edible JT seed is usually thinner than bead type, and a bit smaller. It also tends to have ridges or lines running vertically along the sides of the seed, whereas the bead type is smooth. As a final test, you can always simply take a seed and press it between your fingers. For the grain type, that's enough to crack the shell open easily.
I'd do a visual comparison, except all of the seed except I don't have any edible anymore that is still in it's shells (the shells form long before the seed does, so the only way to tell if you actually got a seed is to pop the shell off). With my rate of success, leaving them intact and allotting the space when I know 99% of the seeds going in are empty just isn't feasible. (I tried the water trick someone taught me for hazelnuts, but JT is too light; they ALL float.)
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 8, 2015 7:11:27 GMT -5
The assumption that they are Ma-Yuen seems reasonable but there is NO way that the vendors could help me, besides the obvious language barrier (I don't speak Mandarin OR Cantonese, and their grasp of English while adequate for sales, is not on the level for fully fledged academic discussion)there is a limit to how much I am willing to trouble them (I am acutely aware of just how much time and how much space I take up collecting my samples for my experiments, and that I am more tolerated than welcomed (lets face it, as a gwailo, tolerated is about as well as I can do in a lot of parts of Chinatown; a lot of old guard residents still prefer to deal exclusively with their own kind.) I do NOT want to risk getting banned from any of the stores.
I doubt they'd know anyway. I've seem them fill the bins, and it's just "open a sack, scoop out the contents into a bin". I strongly suspect that Ma-yuen is simply the Chinese word for all Job's tears; no delineation for type (I know for a fact I have found a wild type seed in a bin of food type seed at least once)
I wouldn't pay attention to the "medicinal" part much. In Asia the line between "food" and "medicine" is much less clearly delineated than it is here in the west. Job's tears are medicine in the same way we might drink a lot of orange juice to deal with a cold, or eat a bowl of chicken soup. The "Herb shops" I use as my sources are closer to pharmacies than supermarkets (I suppose they are rather like the botanicas you find in Latin areas, or a place in an Indian community that supplies products for Aryuveda.)
Job's tears are considered an easy to digest starch, so are good for people who are sick or elderly. From what I understand, they are sort of like barley.
I might try Kintizawa, but Job's tears aren't really a "vegetable". I'm not saying they can't but it's probably like trying to contact Burpee or Johnson's to buy sacks of wheat; they're not really in that industry. The smaller heirloom sellers most of us deal with straddle the line a bit more, since they are often selling to experimenters and homesteaders. But the seed market for commodity farmers and the one for the home grower aren't really considered all that close industrially, and a lot of the more "commercial" companies pick one or the other.
Actually, you'd probably need TWO milling machines since job's tears are usually polished before they are eaten (though I suspect a rice polisher works as well on tear kernels as it does on rice). Low Tech-ly I imagine you can probably do it with a mortar and pestle and a lot of experience on how hard to hit them. But the machine wouldn't have to be all that complicated. In fact, I rather suspect you could cobble together a fairly effective one from an old washing wringer (if you could figure out some way to adjust the rollers to the correct distance apart) some scrap wood or metal (to make a hopper) a bucket, and a lawnmower motor (if you didn't want to have to stand there and turn the crank). The devices they use to crack corn probably would work too.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 8, 2015 13:56:56 GMT -5
" I wouldn't pay attention to the "medicinal" part much. In Asia the line between "food" and "medicine" is much less clearly delineated than it is here in the west. Job's tears are medicine in the same way we might drink a lot of orange juice to deal with a cold, or eat a bowl of chicken soup." - Can it be ground into flour like other cereal grains, for use as the primary ingredient in baked goods, pancakes, etc.? I have nothing at all against medicinals, collect and grow many myself. What got me so interested with this subject was having another possible grain source for flour. I already know I can grow it here, at least the wild variety. I have no idea. I'd guess you can; since it's a grain, but if it is not used that way culturally, you might have some trouble finding recipes and instructions on how, or how it performs, and have to go through a lot of trial and error. Just going by my own gut feeling, if the stuff is used sort of like barley, than maybe barley flour recipes would be a good starting point. By that same logic, it might malt well for beer brewing, if you are into that. " "I might try Kitazawa, but Job's tears aren't really a "vegetable"." - Their seed catalog offers rice, sesame, and other non-vegetables. They are a good company, I have ordered from them in the past. Spendy, though. I will send them a customer inquiry, but I too have my doubts that they will be able to help. Worth a try, though. "I'm not saying they can't but it's probably like trying to contact Burpee or Johnson's to buy sacks of wheat; they're not really in that industry. The smaller heirloom sellers most of us deal with straddle the line a bit more, since they are often selling to experimenters and homesteaders. But the seed market for commodity farmers and the one for the home grower aren't really considered all that close industrially, and a lot of the more "commercial" companies pick one or the other." - Agree, but until proven wrong I am going to make the assumption that Ma-Juen is the old, common, open pollinated grain variety still being grown by small or medium sized interests. Seems like it is a fairly obscure food source, I find it difficult to believe global demand is high enough for large commercial ag or government over there to have even messed around with it yet. Such interests target large vulnerable international markets seeking high returns. [/quote] I wasn't so much referring to Big Ag as to the fact that there are seed companies who cater to small home gardeners who need a packets worth of seed for their backyard gardens, and companies that cater to vocational farmers who devote acres to crops, and the two don't always overlap. The fact that Kitazawa DOES sell seed for a rice is a good sign, but not a definitive one [/i]I also read somewhere that Ma-Yuen is also grown in Indonesia and Philippines. I have a seed contact in the Philippines, I will try to reach him regarding this subject. Perhaps another HG member with China/Indonesia/Philippine connections could pursue this as well. [/quote] Not a terrible idea. While I am sure that reports on Ma-Yuen production exist, complete with a list of suppliers (if it's common enough to be available in bags in this country, it has to have a pretty decent acreage) But I am equally sure those reports are all in Chinese. Maybe some of the Phillipine oines are in Spanish. [/i] Once I develop an interest in something, I can get a little obsessive. :-) . [/quote] YOU'RE OBESSIVE? You forget you're talking to the person who is willing to spend hours and lug ten or twenty pounds of beans back home on his back EVERY WEEK just in the hope of gleaning one or two seeds he can actually make use of! And it's much the same thing with grains. I have tried to grow grasses for grains that are so far down the scale of "emergency/famine foods" that they'd best be described as "for emergencies, because no SANE person would EVER grow this as their primary crop!" Cram-cram comes to mind (cram-cram is basically an edible seeded version of the grass we know in this country as sand or buffalo burr, and it's grains are covered with just as many sharp stabbing thorns as any of those.) [/i] I hope I have not distracted from the original purpose of your thread, was not my intention. My point is that I think you should have a two-pronged strategy of doing what you have been doing while continuing the quest of seeking out a more stable source of viable seeds in quantity. Difficult as it may be I cannot believe it is impossible. Update: I sent Kitazawa Seed Company a customer inquiry, will let you know if I get a response. . [/quote] Three pronged actually. Comb the markets, pursue any online retailers that might help, and try to encourage anyone who can get seed from the one possible stable source we have (the SSE member) to use it wisely and devote a LOT of the crop to seed increase (even if it is only one type, with a little careful effort we can probably get enough to at least make the supply a bit more steady. Not a lot, but it'd be a start.) Oh and since I never updated after harvest the grand total of kernels I got this year was: four.
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Post by steev on Dec 8, 2015 20:09:44 GMT -5
One for the mouse; One for the crow; One to rot; One to grow.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 9, 2015 6:25:09 GMT -5
It's hard to say. If they are selling it medicinally, then it is SURELY milled and polished. On the other hand, they are listing it by number of seeds whereas one would assume the stuff for use would be sold by weight.
Aliexpress is presumably a branch of Alibaba.com, a fairly famous Chinese online shipping service (think a Chinese version of Ebay)But it would have the same problems as ebay, you'd have to rely on the integrity of the seller, and Chinese seed sellers who work through ebay are sort of notorious for bad info and false claims (you'll note that one of the offers below on the page you displayed are for bright blue strawberries. I personally would not use this one myself, but I can't say definitively it would be a guaranteed cheat.
And at least this page has accomplished one thing; you now know what Ma-Yuen seed in it's shell looks like as compared to the "wild type"
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 9, 2015 17:19:02 GMT -5
Tell me about it. I've been holding off an order to someone in Europe who has seeds I have literally been looking DECADES for because 1. their seeds seem split between two different addresses (maybe they just keep some things in one place some in another, but it seems fishy to me) and 2. I'm always terrified about customs/ the USDA (not that they'll confiscate the seeds, that is a pain an annoyance but can be gotten back, the possibility that just trying will put me on some sort of "watch list" and one day they'll batter down my door and confiscate my whole collection, or decide to "make an example of me" to justify their budgets (in this day and age, I'm not sure someone wouldn't try and define trying to bring unapproved seeds in as an act of bioterrorism. I love my seed collection, but "love" and "being willing to die for" are not exactly the same thing.)
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 9, 2015 19:06:13 GMT -5
I'm not sure someone wouldn't try and define trying to bring unapproved seeds in as an act of bioterrorism. Been there...
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Post by steev on Dec 9, 2015 19:28:49 GMT -5
Just don't try to import any variety named "Jihad".
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Post by steev on Dec 15, 2015 0:08:21 GMT -5
For years, here in Oakland, I've seen middle-aged women (no harm; that's my age-peeps) gathering acorns along Mandana Blvd; I figured they were Native American, California Indians having used acorns as a staple; turns out they're Korean. Cultural interplay is so cool and often unexpected!
Clueless Gray-Haired White Dude Power! Might be a movement; might need more fiber, but still...
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 15, 2015 7:37:34 GMT -5
The Seoul distributor/ Chinese field thing seems common. The bean mix I obtained my Owl's Eye cowpeas from was the same. I get the feeling China doesn't do much in the pre-packaged export foodstuff business. Almost all of the bags of stuff I have ever bought sold in Chinatown say that they were packed in Brooklyn. I assume that the seeds come here in big plastic burlap sacks like they use for corn, since that seems to be how the herb shops that sell these kinds of things out of bins by weight get them (well most of them, I still remember one day I was in a smaller one and saw the guy refilling the rice bean tub. He brought over a box of the small pre-packed bags and then proceeded to tear open each one and pour the contents into the tub.) It's one of the things that makes it sort of hard for me to work out where the seeds I want are actually coming from (if I could nail each one down to a region, I might theoretically be able to predict when I should be looking for a given type based on seasonal data (to work out harvest time for the region) and normal time for packing and distribution through the market.) It's also why I have to re-check the same brands repeatedly every year, they all use the supplier that's most convenient at the time, so bags of the same brand can contain different stuff depending on when they were packed.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 17, 2015 10:02:00 GMT -5
I just remembered a really interesting site, and am going to post the link on the landrace seeds thread as well, they sell Adlay seed as a grain crop, not as an ornamental. They also have perennial wheat ( in the grass lawn Yucca category)though that may be only per plant rather than seed..my computer is not cooperating this morning. They have lots of other interesting goodies although their focus has been on developing landrace tree crops. I'd forgotton about them..a few years ago I had contacted them but then they were not selling seed, (an individual can't realistically import plants into Canada) it seems that now they are. Very much worth checking out. oikostreecrops.com/products/seeds/
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 17, 2015 11:39:31 GMT -5
It might work but given their mention of bead use in the description, I think it is quite possible that they are selling the hard shelled kind AS grain (remember, it's just as edible as the softshell, just a lot harder to get out) I'm also a little suspicious of the fact that the picture with the listing is very clearly barley, not shelled Job's tears.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 17, 2015 16:58:18 GMT -5
They're similar but JT is usually a bit wider and the "fold" in the bottom is more like a dip or furrow (that's actually the reason why piercing a JT for stringing doesn't actually make it non-viable; so long as you use the natural hole that runs along the inside, the curved shape and various sheaths will keep the kernel intact.)
Polishing is usually done to speed up cooking time, and to facilitate ease of eating (polished grain is simply stickier than non-polished, a useful thing in cultures where you are using chopsticks to eat everything and have a culture of making sure every last grain goes in your mouth.)
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