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Khorasan Wheat

Triticum turgidum subsp. turanicum

Also known as kamut (EN)

A variety of wheat

How to sow Khorasan wheat: Direct seed into furrows. Broadcast or use grain drill. Rake in, roll soil to firm the bed.

Sun requirement for Khorasan wheat: Plant in Full Sun

An ancient wheat, known for at least 5,000 years, with grains much larger than other wheat, hard and glassy and with no hull. Whole grains can be cooked like rice after long soaking, and ground grain makes flatbread with a sourdough starter or a creamy porridge. It is easy to grow and thresh, and the heads need covering as the grain ripens. Sow in autumn or early spring, and mature the harvest in a greenhouse for about two weeks before threshing.

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Growstuff is a free, community-run site for people who grow food. Keep track of what you plant and harvest, find seeds to swap, and see what is growing near you. Join to record your own Khorasan wheat.

Khorasan wheat facts

Lifespan

Annual living and reproducing in a single year or less

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 Khorasan wheat, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 5°C and a shortest growing cycle of 90 days at its best temperature, about 1260 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 Khorasan wheat 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.