maslin (mixed grain polyculture)

So, I'm wanting to grow small grains. I've grown a little wheat and a mixed-grain cover crop. I also want to landrace everything. So I've been acquiring broad genetics in wheat and upland rice and barley and a little bit of rye and oats. And I'm looking at them all and trying to figure out how I want to grow them and what I want to select for. And it's an aside for this particular subject, but I've got Marc Bonfils in the back of my head whenever thinking about wheat. And I wondered about just mixing them all and whether that would be a cool idea or a giant clusterfuck. (Like, maybe they all need to be harvested at a different time or maybe threshed and winnowed using a different procedure, and this will be a terrible idea.)

So I start searching around and I find this article on maslin and it kind of electrifies me. The next thing to do, obviously, is search Permies to see how y'all are engaging with this idea.

...

Really? Nothing? A few people throw out mixed grains for livestock to eat in the field and that's it. Huh.

But, maybe it's just that no one has written about it. So I'm here asking...have you done this? Is it a thing? How does it work and how has it worked for you?

This is so interesting! I've just moved my own gardening focus toward starchy, calorie-dense crops and I would love to give this a try. It seems to be such a practical solution to many problems around growing grain, even for small homesteaders and home gardeners. I'm by no means an expert, but I'll be watching this thread to see what other folks think. Thank you for sharing this!

Just warehousing some related links:
Discussion at GTS (I must have read this when it was fresh and then semi-forgot)
Canadian maslins
stabilize crop yields with maslins

No specific connection to maslin, but I want to stow them somewhere:
continuous grain cropping
RED Gardens first time wheat

While I have no details myself, I know people are doing this. Going to Seed had a mixed summer grain landrace that they offered this year. (2024) I was able to get a package. But I don't know what records I'll be able to keep on them this year.

Maybe Joseph Lofthouse has some insight to offer?

I also got a packet of summer grains from GTS. I was thinking today about mixing it with my wheat, barley, and rye just to see how it works.

Ok, we’re expecting a rainy weekend and I hustled to get a maslin experiment planted today.

Things didn't really go as planned. I ran out of summer grain mix less than half way through my plot, so I used the other mix of grain lightly on those seeded loci and more heavily on the ones missed. But no harm -- it's all experimentation.

The only grass heads that came up were whatever horrible mix of perennial grasses I fight with all the time. Nothing that seemed like one of the edible grains I planted. Nothing to save. Nothing good. :-D

I am used to spending money and effort on wild experiments other people think are dumb, but I'm not really used to such dismal outcomes. But it is what it is. I've grown a little wheat before but I have a lot to learn.

and it looked like you did everything right to give the seeds a fighting chance!
Did you mean nothing in the mix came up or just none of the grains?
Birds ate all of my wheat one year and mice maybe?

Seems like the clovers would have made it and radishes?

There is clover! But I really meant is that none of the grains I planted produced grain for me to carry into the next year.

Just thinking out loud here. Why do things grow where they grow?

AI Overview
Bacterial-dominated soils (high Nitrogen, low pH) favor fast-growing crops, vegetables, and weeds, while fungal-dominated soils (high Carbon, higher pH) are essential for trees, shrubs, and woody perennials. Bacterial soils cycle nutrients quickly, whereas fungal soils provide long-term stability, water retention, and, according to a Review Considering fungal:bacterial dominance in soils, enhanced carbon sequestration.

I planted Bur Oak acorns years ago and as they grew moved some of them around our farm. Some took and some did not. Those planted near other tress seemed to mainly survive while those planted in grassland away from trees did not. Was it the fungus in the soil near the trees that allowed the transplanted oaks to take root and grow? The acorns were started behind our farm grove sandwiched in between a shelter belt. The survival rate of the acorns was very high except the fox squirrels found some of them !

To add further to the above. The transplanted oaks were mainly bare root with very little accompanying soil. If we could have moved them with more of a root ball along with some soil maybe those planted in the remote locations would have made it?

A negative result is still a result - thank you Christopher!! I suspect that you may have had a better result if you had grown the patches all together, it sounds like they just got took over by the surrounding vegetation.
Some interesting thoughts though. The idea of a continuous cropping grain field is intriging:
from your link to John Letts' work

A CGC wheat field mimics the ecological structure of a natural grassland. The success of this approach depends on six principles:
(i) early autumn planting of winter cereals that require vernalisation (ie a cold period).
(ii) high genetic diversity within the crop (i.e. populations or genuine landraces)
(iii) undersowing cereal crops with short white clover
(iv) no ploughing or inter-row tillage
(v) leaving all crop residues on the soil surface after the harvest, and
(vi) no use of artificial fertiliser or agri-chemicals.

The timing is presumably climate specific....

Hi!

I’ve been trying to understand exactly that for the last two years, although I still don’t feel I have enough real experience yet to speak with certainty. What I’m slowly learning is that, in this kind of regenerative approach, the goal is not for every plant to be synchronized in timing, but in function. In other words, they do not all need to sprout, grow, or finish at the same moment, as long as each one is helping the system in its own way.

A good mix seems to work because the plants are doing different jobs at different times without leaving the soil empty or exhausted. Some cover the ground quickly, some send roots deeper, some help with nitrogen, and some may give grain or biomass. So the real “synchronization” is not about making everything uniform, but about keeping the soil active, covered, and biologically alive for as much of the year as possible.

Right now I’m trying something along those lines on a farm near Madrid, where I’m working on regenerating the soil. I’m sowing a mix of cereal, legumes, and clover now, knowing that much of it will probably die by July. Even so, part of it may reseed itself, and at least I hope to avoid having the soil left bare and compacted. Then in October I’ll try another mix, this time hoping that what establishes can either reseed itself more reliably or persist as a perennial. Madrid makes this challenging because winters are cold, while summers are dry and can reach about 111°F, so any system here has to be able to live with both ends of that range.

Whatever you do, make it fun.

I planted about 2000 varieties of wheat together. I ended up selecting for varieties that matured seeds at about the same time, and grew about waist high. I don't like to stoop over to harvest.

I would gladly incorporate barley and rye into the same maslin.

Traditionally, a maslin might have also contained seeds from legumes, and from seedy weeds like amaranth or lambsquarters.