heritage barley trials

This year, with the move and everything, I was only able to plant two very small plots of heritage grains. They are both barley varieties. The top picture is the Tibetan Barley. It did remarkably well this year. The heads are full and it stood up well to some of the downpours and high winds we experienced. If this were in a large field, it would have yielded very well indeed.

The barley below is Purple Barley. I believe it is also of Tibetan decent. It did not perform nearly as well as the Tibetan. The heads are small, short. The kernels look nice and plump though and are indeed purple. It doesn't show up in the picture, but you can see the purple colour within the hull. As you can see it did lodge quite a bit in the summer storms. If this crop was in a larger field, it would not look very good at all and would be difficult to harvest. I am encouraged to keep up with the trials of the Tibetan variety. I will also propagate the purple stuff and see if I can't get a better variety over the years.