Growing Hulless Oats - Soil Prep

Hi all- first post. My wife and I grow veggies for sale (CSA) but we're determined to grow hulless oats (and ultimately other grains) for ourselves. Zone 8b, maritime northwest WA. We're working with hand tools, very heavy clay soil, and little money to throw at the matter. We could find so little info about growing grains and cover crops at this scale, we assumed it would be easy. Used up two attempts this year, and we'd be lucky to yield half the oats we started with. If we can get oats or other cover crops to grow reliably, we'll be on our way to expanding the vegetable garden without relying on imported compost.

A word on the soil. There's more space than we could ever fill. Five years ago when we moved here, it was seriously over-grazed and dead. In dry summer months, it's so hard that a heavy digging hoe will bounce off it. In winter, you could just about throw it on a pottery wheel. Early-on, we hired our neighbor to chisel-plow and disc it, and we broadcast fescue mix in the resulting dust. It grew well and uniformly without irrigation. In following years, the ground has hardened again and the field has reverted to shorter grass and buttercup. We have a hard time getting any food to grow in it without putting on a thick layer of compost (and that we do). We're working with hoes, broadfork, rake, scythe, sprinkler, push seeder, etc.

Your experience with similar soil and cover/grain crops would be greatly appreciated. If it's truly not feasible without more horsepower, that'd be just as good to know. Thanks.

Welcome to the forum!

I am not familiar with growing oats or grains.

My suggestion would be to start building soil health with compost, compost tea, wood chips, leaves, and mushrooms.

Our soil series by Dr Bryant Redhawk can help you with this:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

A few tidbits:

https://permies.com/t/63914/Soil

https://permies.com/t/67969/quest-super-soil

https://permies.com/t/76498/biology-soil

Welcome to the bad soil club! We have stodgy clay mixed with sand, either rock hard when it's dry or absolutely not drainage when it's wet. Unfortunately, it's wet in winter and dry in summer. But the reality is that improved heaps.
There was no topsoil whatsoever. We get mulch from a treelopper when we can, the more the merrier, but it costs us a carton of beer a truckload. It brings in heaps of fungi which improve the soil. We also do chop and drop and we plant a LOT. The good thing is that we are selling plants and therefore do have lots of plants to play with.
Recently, I got interested in grain because I realised that in order to feed animals we need grain (and the animals make the soil fertile). I grew some corn last year that went well but so far my grain suffer from what I think is deer attack (so far, for the cheap self-sufficient living, fencing gear is so expensive!). I also want to make really good bread so I need really good wheat.

Thank you Anne. I was thinking about the invasive plants quote all day. Got some useful bits from the links.
And thank you Nicola. It seems I'll have to improve the soil incrementally for the whole grain area before making the leap. It sounds like you've a very similar situation. I put a generous amount of nice ramial wood chips in our garden area a few years ago. The soil is getting better except where the chips got turned under prematurely (not a surprise, my mistake). I think woodier plants might tolerate it but the veggies do not. Thistle likes it.

Clay soil is genuinely tough to work with for grains, the drainage issue is the main one. Cover cropping with something deep-rooted before you sow the oats can help break it up over time. Daikon radish or tillage radish are good for this, they die back over winter and leave channels that improve drainage without you having to do much.

I've only ever grown grain as small scale experiments, but even at the smallest scale it is quite clear that the different varieties/cultivars/strains/landraces of for  example oats have slightly different preferences for soil and growing conditions in general. What I mean is that even if oat as a species has different requirements than wheat or barley, there is quite a lot of variety within the species, and it may pay to try as many varieties as possible.
Unfortunately, so called hulless oats are seldom completely hulless, which may or may not be a problem depending on the intended use. I guess trying many varieties and being quite selective if you are saving your own seed would help.