Hulless oat question

What is the significant of them? One of the biggest searches and referrals to our web site and forum is for hulless or hulled oats.  We get several a day even though our site only mention them in passing in  couple of threads. Just curious since we get so many and they come from all over the world.

They're strongly advocated by Jeavons' Ecology Action foundation.

Presumably they're easier to process at home.

They are not hulless through GMO, are they?

Antibubba wrote:
They are not hulless through GMO, are they?

No, they're an heirloom variety produced by selective breeding.

Reading up a little more, they seem to have more of a tendency to lodge than other oat varieties.

Friends of mine  raised  a couple of turkeys on homegrown  hulless oats they had in excess of what they needed for their horses.   Both turkeys ended up over 50 pounds (55 and 58 respectively)  they had to cut them in half to get them into the oven but they were WONDERFUL. We had worried they might be tough and or dry but they were as tender and moist  (but not fatty at all)  as any I have ever eaten. The main problems were killing them..it took two  men to manage it ..and finding something that was big enough to fit even half a turkey into to cook the things, they were HUGE.

We've tried growing the hulless oats here since regular oats are grown in our area and we thought they should do well.  The hulless oats did very poorly - we took to calling them oatless hulls as they didn't seem to fill out at all.  Some friends also had the same experience.  Is there anyone in the upper Midwest that is successful with this crop?  What variety and source of seed are you using?

Larisa

I have had good results with the hulless, or may be more correctly as good as the hulled oats,  this was in Colorado, there is less volume but the weight was the same,  the hulless oats weigh about twice as much as hulled oats,

Can some one tell me what you mean when you say "more of a tendency to lodge",
I have not grown grains before & would be interested to hear about this.

The plants blow over  as the stems do not support them sufficiently in wind or severe weather.   It 's one reason why cereal grains have been bred for shorter stems.  When you go past a field and see patches of it lying down, that's the part that "lodged".  It makes the grain difficult to harvest.

Oh, I see, thanks for explaining! I had no idea that this could be a problem with grain.

I live in zone 6a and I had good success with the "naked" oat this year, I yielded enough for about 12lbs of flour so far and Im not quite done processing all of it. Since I had to thresh by hand it was rather easy IMO. I planted in March I believe and it was ready by late June. I also experimented with cutting fully grown plants for hay, and I found that if you cut them high enough they will come back so you can get 2 cutttings. I cannot confirm this for large scale on really small scale. I also, tossed some hay on my beds and the oats that were left on the heads sprouted and are now growing back, Im curious to see how far they make it before they die in the fall/winter. If anything I found that I can get a crop for eating, replant mid summer and get a hay crop for the fall, then plant again for a spring crop. That part is theory currently