Last edited on November 02, 2026. View history
Hulless Oat
A variety of oat
How to sow hulless oat: Direct seed/broadcast
Sun requirement for hulless oat: Plant in Full Sun
A traditional hulless oat from Canterbury, suited to bio-intensive growing but hand-harvested and hand-threshed, as threshing methods such as flails still need developing. It is a preferred carbon crop because it helps release calcium and phosphate from New Zealand soils. Sow in trays in autumn or early spring and transplant at 5 cm high, 10 cm apart on the diagonal.
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Hulless oat facts
Lifespan
Crop cycle
Optimal light
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For hulless oat, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 5°C and a shortest growing cycle of 110 days at its best temperature, about 1430 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your hulless oat will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Plant hulless oats with
pea
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Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Avena sativa L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Liliopsida Commelinidae Cyperales Gramineae |
|---|---|
| Killing temperature | growth: -1 °C, rest: -15 °C |
| Life form | grass |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | heavy, medium, light |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | neutral day (12-14 hours), long day (>14 hours) |
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