Trying to plant wheat in some rough ground today helped me understand why America's early colonists were so enthusiastic about growing corn. Corn can be planted in hills, which are clumps of three or four plants, each clump a couple or more feet apart; and each plant in that clump makes a whole earful of large grains. For a reasonable crop of wheat, you need a lot of plants; each plant never grows much bigger than weeds; and you need, to start at least, an expanse of weed-free ground for the closely spaced plants.

Fortunately, I'm not planting wheat because of the current economic crisis, the current food quality crisis or the current food contamination crisis. I'm doing it just for fun: to see how much space I need to grow a loaf of bread.

I parted ways with past and present wheat farmers right from the get-go. Instead of tilling the soil to quell weeds in the five-by-ten-foot planting area between two dwarf apple trees, I scratched out and pulled at the weeds using a Ripper (from www.hearthoe.com) and my hands. Once the ground was reasonably clear, I raked it smooth and sprinkled on some wheat seeds. The thin mulch of finely ground bark that came next should keep the soil beneath the seeds moist and check growth of any small weeds, hopefully letting the wheat seeds get a head start. Finally came a layer of Reemay, a lightweight material through which water and light can penetrate. The Reemay keeps my chickens and ducks, who otherwise would grub in the soil and gobble up all the seeds, at bay until the seedlings are a few inches high.