Growing sorghum

So in Japan, sorghum is considered to be a trendy health food (it is called 'takakibi'), and is quite expensive at health food stores. Some cafes also sell sorghum burgers.

I bought a pack of sorghum seeds last year (at the health food store, of course), and planted about fifteen stalks in my garden.

The good news is that they grew extremely well. The bad news is that I have no idea how to process the grain. I have read tons of articles, but most of them seem to be geared for people who have threshing machines and other equipment. I can`t afford to buy anything expensive so that I can process my grain. I left it on the stalk outside for many weeks, so it is plenty dry. Then I brought it in, and it is still sitting in vases around the kitchen.


I don`t want to make flour out of it, but just want to get it to a state where I can cook the whole grain.

The season to plant it here is May, and I would love to grow this grain all over the garden, if I knew that I would be able to eat it afterwards! Does anyone have advice for processing sorghum on a small scale?

Also, I was removing the stalks from last year, and it was really difficult! I had to do a lot of digging and pulling to get all of the old stalks out. Is that what everyone does? Or maybe most people are not growing sorghum in their home garden? I have a large quantity of seeds left, and I think it will make some good meals, if I can figure out how to get it off of the stalk and into a pot.

Comments

  • RustBeltCowgirl
    RustBeltCowgirl Posts: 1,403 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Here is a whole page of sorghum articles from Mother Earth News.


  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @RustBeltCowgirl Thank you for taking the time to research these articles. I am okay with growing sorghum. It grew fantastically last year! 😀 I`m wondering if anyone has info on processing it for cooking when I don`t have any specialized equipment. It seems like most people who grow sorghum are doing it on a bigger scale, and have machines or hand powered devices that remove the inedible parts. I always want to eat grain in its whole form, so there is no need to separate the outer layers. I do need to thresh it so that I can eat the grain, but any hand or mechanical threshers are very, very expensive.

  • RustBeltCowgirl
    RustBeltCowgirl Posts: 1,403 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Kuri and Kona Found this out there.

    Here's a YouTube video using hardware cloth:

    Another video where the guy just beats the tar out of them in a 5 gal bucket.


    Hope this answers your question better.

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @RustBeltCowgirl Thank you these ideas. I am not sure if I can get hardware cloth here, but I can look. As for your second idea, I can certainly beat the sorghum. 😁

  • Lisa K
    Lisa K Posts: 1,936 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I plan on trying to grow popping Sorghum in place of popcorn due to my corn intolerance.

  • AdrienneHew
    AdrienneHew Posts: 94 ✭✭✭

    Awesome thread! I grow sorghum primarily for my goats and chickens, but have an heirloom variety I want to eat for myself. Like you so far I have only put it in vases, @Kuri and Kona . Do you have contacts in Japan who might explain to you how they process it? I'm always fascinated how the farmers there process and raise crops sometimes Mickey Mousing together a contraption from something like an old sewing machine. LOL -- I'm thinking of kanpyo here, which I made last year just using a peeler and clothes horse in the sun. As for hardware cloth, pretty much any garden store should have that, no? Or are you that far from civilization? I guess ordering online could be an option, if not thrift stores, yard sales and church bazaars with something similar. I have, for example, all those trays they include with toaster and convection ovens that have holes that size and smaller as well as cooling racks used in baking. I'd love to know what you settle on.

    As for pulling it out, the ones I grow for feed are the ones that are doing "best" currently and I have been wondering how hard it might be to pull out one day. They are good in deserted areas like where I live, so I can imagine just how deep those roots go.

    @Lisa K , have you tried popping teff? I recall seeing that sold in Marshalls on the mainland some years back.

  • Lisa K
    Lisa K Posts: 1,936 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @AdrienneHew I have not heard of popping teff, I will have to try to find it, thanks!

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @AdrienneHew Thank you for all of your ideas.


    I don`t know anyone local who is also growing sorghum. From what I can tell, it is mostly grown as a trendy health food, so the average small time or private home gardener would probably not be growing it.

    I am right in the middle of a big city, but I am still trying to determine how common hardware cloth is in Japan. Some things that are common in other countries are not really available here, and vice versa. Some of what I found online seems to be chicken wire. I`m not sure if what I am looking at is even the same thing. Church bazaars and yard sales are not something really done in Japan, and the thrift stores only sell completely new items that people have bought but never used. (They will not take things with open packages, for example) I am reasonably sure that the thrift stores would not have anything like that. They won`t accept items that are not common in everyday life. I also don`t have an oven, as those are also not common here. Sorry to be so unhelpful!

    However, I imagine that I can go to a home store, and if I can`t find something similar, maybe an employee could help me think of an idea. I will let you know when I get something figured out!

    As for pulling the sorghum out, I got mine out with a shovel and a lot of pulling and digging...a lot. 😁

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    Okay, so today I went to the home center store. They did not have hardware cloth or even an appropriate wire, but I did find a metal net that I think I could rub it against, like in the top video. I don`t want to make it into flour; I want to just cook it as a whole grain. So after the seeds are separated from the stalk, is it good to be cooked, or do I have to follow another step?

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    Update: I have gotten to the edible grain! Rubbing it repeatedly on the metal net left only an edible grain. I can`t wait to finish the whole batch, and then I am going to cook it. This seems like a great project to work on while listening to an audio book. 😁

  • Lisa K
    Lisa K Posts: 1,936 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Awesome @Kuri and Kona, great job!

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @Lisa K Thank you. I hope to continue work on it today.

  • RustBeltCowgirl
    RustBeltCowgirl Posts: 1,403 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Kuri and Kona as the old saying goes "where there's a will, there's a way". You got it done.

    A link to sorghum recipes.


  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @RustBeltCowgirl Well, I still have a lot of winnowing to do, but we are working on it. Thank you for the recipes.

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Kuri and Kona I would look in a craft store for something that could be used for hardware cloth. It might be used in the back or a craft or art piece.

    Aldo for those hard to dig up plants if you have room for containers grow them in that and dump the container later so you don;t have to dig them up. I am not sure if your space would limit that idea or not.

  • AdrienneHew
    AdrienneHew Posts: 94 ✭✭✭

    I didn't realize you actually live in Japan. Which area? I thought you had bought seed you brought back to the US or some other country. Haha!

    Have you considered a rice polishing machine for getting to the inner part of the sorghum? I know they have several home models in Japan. I wanna say you can get one under $200, which obviously would only make sense if you're doing quite a bit.

    I spent 5 1/2 weeks in Japan back in 2019. Thank goodness because lockdown started on the day I was supposed to leave for Fukuoka to do some WOOFFing in 2020. I spent a lot of my 2019 time on farms or at least with farming families, but didn't take note of hardware cloth. Have you thought of a cooling rack used for baking? Tokyu Hands must sell those!

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @Monek Marie Thank you. I did use a combination of containers and planting in my horribly clay soil, and the sorghum did well in both. The container grown sorghum stalks were definitely easier to dispose of later!

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @AdrienneHew I live in Kanagawa prefecture. You mentioned Fukuoka. I have been there for a one week trip, but that was many years ago. Previously, I lived in Hokkaido, and I have also lived in Okinawa.

    I actually got a round, metal net from the garden store. It seems to work well for winnowing.

    By the way, tourists are still not allowed into Japan, so it is good that you came when you could! 😉

  • AdrienneHew
    AdrienneHew Posts: 94 ✭✭✭

    I hope to get to meet you on my next trip! Would love to see what you are growing and how. If you come to Hawaii first, I'd love to show you our place too!

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @AdrienneHew Thank you for the invitation. Have you been to Japan quite a few times?

  • AdrienneHew
    AdrienneHew Posts: 94 ✭✭✭

    @Kuri and Kona , I have only been twice. I stayed away for most of my life because I was intimidated by the language and most people who love it there do so over things that I don't find that interesting -- different flavor KitKats and manga. LOL.

    We went first in 2018 to visit friends from Osaka, who used to live in New Jersey. I fell in love especially when I got out of the city to visit farms. Actually, my Osaka friends used to tell me that farms like we had in NJ weren't really accessible. I have no idea why they would say that, but I have never been interested in places that don't have good farming and natural food movements.

    In 2019, I spent 5 1/2 weeks traveling around between Tokyo and Wakayama learning to make miso and shoyu, doing natural dying classes, cooking classes and a little farm visiting. It was a very enriching experience. I now make Japanese food several times per week.... and it's pretty good, if I do say so myself. LOL

  • Kuri and Kona
    Kuri and Kona Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    @AdrienneHew It is true that Japanese is a very different language than English, but it is a very logical language. There are very few exceptions to rules in grammar. I am a native English speaker, but use only Japanese with hanging out with friends or for work purposes. However, I also live here; there aren`t very many reasons to really learn Japanese if you don`t plan to use it a lot.

    Japan does have a sustainability and natural food movement, but it is definitely in its infancy.

    I have never made homemade miso or shoyu, but those are things that I have thought about from time to time.

    If you would like to PM me at some point to talk about Japan related stuff, you are welcome to do so. 😊

  • AdrienneHew
    AdrienneHew Posts: 94 ✭✭✭

    @Kuri and Kona , I agree. It is very logical! Until studying it though, I only had experience with European languages (French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, German etc) and Chinese -- the rules of which all had been ingrained in my psyche even though I'm not fluent in many of them. Learning to flex the muscle for putting the verb at the end of a sentence and using markers instead of declensions was totally new to me, but it's seeping in even at my age. LOL

    I love language learning as a way to connect with traditions which are often falsifed in the North American narrative. So I plan/ned to spend more time in Japan to learn how to bring some of the older farming principles to Hawaii. Korean Natural Farming is a big deal here, but it is based on Japanese traditional farming. I'd like to see what the Japanese do that is not included in the system. I also love all things food and the way the Japanese riff off of other cuisines inspires me. So all of that is a lot of my motivation.

    Where did you live before moving there? Yuasa in Wakayama is the birthplace of Japanese shoyu. I can hook you up with my friend there who taught me, if you ever want a good guide. She also makes miso, but I learned that from another family. It's definitely more straightforward compared to shoyu. I'm still mystified how they keep vermin out of it. Everything in Hawaii attracts ants, rats or roaches.

    Thanks for the offer to reach out and chat Japan. I'll probably take you up on that after I'm done with a project. I just got home and am stalling. LOL. In the meantime, I would like to extend the same offer to you.

  • vickeym
    vickeym Posts: 2,134 ✭✭✭✭✭

    What a great idea. Never really thought about growing sorghum. Sounds like it may not be a good choice here though. Not sure I could get the temperature where they would need to be even in the greenhouse.