Growing Lentils

Any experience or info on growing lentils in cold climates?  I'm going to try this year.  Curious what their growing season is though; how long before they produce?  

Lentils are a drought-tolerant, cool-season crop. They are usually grown in semi-arid climates without irrigation. A minimum of 10 inches of annual rainfall is required for lentil production (Cash et al., 2001).

Plant Guide - USDA Plants Databaseplants.usda.gov › plantguide › pdf › pg_lecu2
PDF

Lentils grow best in cool weather. Sow lentils in spring as early as 2 to 3 weeks before the average last frost date. Lentils can be started indoors before transplanting to the garden; lentil seeds will germinate in 10 days at 68°F. Lentils require 80 to 110 days to come to harvest.

How to Grow Lentil - Harvest to Table

There is one farm in Sweden that grows them and they have been copied by a farm in England More on them herethat has also grown them for a few years now. They need warm weather especially in late summer to ripen and they need dry weather in August, to dry down and not mold. The parents in law are trying about 2 acres of them this year, will be interesting especially to see if the machine shop can manage to set up a combine to harvest them!

I planted my 10 foot row of them. 4 inch spacing in between the plants in the rows and 6 inch spacing in between the rows. I soaked them this morning and planted them this evening along with some compost from the garden on top. I covered them because we are experiencing mild frosts overnight. Otherwise it has been 8+C* almost every day for 2 weeks without any rain!

The forcast is for rain on monday and i am assuming i will not need to water them because of the timing of my planting.

Thanks for the interesting link!

This made me look up the cultivation of lentils in one Baden/Bavarian Region (Schwäbische Alb) with rather harsh climate.

They were cultivated until the 1950s, then cultivation stopped for various decades.
In the 1980s an organic producer started again with lentils and introduced the Puy lentil for that reason. Only after the year 2000 they discovered that the original Svabian lentils survived in the seedbank of St. Petersburg and they were re-introduced.
Now with the rise of organic farming and slow food there is a co-op producing local lentils.
If you look at the homepage of this grower, it looks like the production receives funds from the EU: https://www.lauteracher.de/
Edit to add: I just clicked on the video on that homepage and it is really interesting. The farmer explains that the so-called weeds have an average of 10-20 specific insects which depend on them, some even up to 80 species! That means that tolerating weeds greatly enhances the number of beneficial insects on the acres.

Lentils

A very popular dish from that region is Spätzle mit Linsen (Southern German pasta with lentils). It is a perfect vegetarian dish as it combines proteins from pulses, wheat and egg.

I have to admit I never liked pulses much, but have lately found ways to enjoy them (as in Dals). One of my favourites is lentil salad with Mango (frozen), thinly sliced onions, coriander/cilantro and Balsamico vinegar.

Skandi Rogers wrote:There is one farm in Sweden that grows them and they have been copied by a farm in England More on them herethat has also grown them for a few years now. They need warm weather especially in late summer to ripen and they need dry weather in August, to dry down and not mold. The parents in law are trying about 2 acres of them this year, will be interesting especially to see if the machine shop can manage to set up a combine to harvest them!

I tested 40 lentil seeds bought at the grocery & they all sprouted in 3 days! Too early yet to plant outdoors nut they are going gangbusters in the basement. I want to use them as a cover crop & plan to plant ASAP- Prob ably Marvh here in the Blue Ridge.

I was gifted (4) 5 gallon buckets of lentils do you think it's too late to broadcast them in the orchard this season or should I wait till spring?

The ones I planted in my plum orchard grew fine but have not produced any blooms or seed perhaps due to the shade.  The few I tested in hot sun struggled and produced one seed.  You know your frost date  but I do not have enough experience to say how long they take to maturity  but the ones in the shade have not produced in 4 months. Not a lot of biomass but they get no water.

What a  great resource these forums are -- I was just about to post something about lentils and found this long thread! I was glad to see others have used lentils as cover crops and have not reported any reasons that is a bad idea.  I've been using lentils for years as a quick way to get roots in the soil after harvest of annual crops.  I always use brown lentils from the grocery store, and simply scatter them fairly thickly and lightly rake the soil. Germination seems to be darn near 100%. They are very cold tolerant, although I lack info on just how cold tolerant.  I use the tops for mulch when the next crops need to go in, and gradually pull lentils as crops need more space.