How bread is grown: planting and caring for crops

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Bread is invaluable in the life of every person. Thanks to this product, people survived by waging endless wars, the main goal of which was the conquest of fertile lands. Songs, sayings, proverbs are composed about bread. No wonder folk wisdom says: "Bread is the head of everything", emphasizing its paramount importance. How is bread grown? How to plant and care for crops, read the article.

Who grows crops?

In the old days, this was done by peasant farmers. Today, a person who grows bread is called a grain grower. But this is a generalized name for a profession that does not actually exist, as well as universities, schools where you can get it. For a useful product to be on the table, people of different professions need to work hard.

In this matter, all stages of the work of a well-coordinated team of agricultural workers are important:

• Breeders who develop new varieties of crops.
• Agronomists who monitor the condition of the land, as well as seeds in the winter. People of this profession control the plowing of the land. According to numerous calculations, they determine the date of this procedure.
• Tractor drivers engaged in plowing, harrowing and sowing seeds.
• Combiners, without which you can not do in the harvest season. These people on special machines - combines - mow the ears, thresh the grain, which is poured into the back of the car and taken away to the current for drying.
• Drivers (drivers) delivering grain to the current, and then to the flour mills.
• Pilots working in civil aviation who carry out pest control of crops.

Bread is the we alth of the country. Farmers are engaged in its cultivation, but the most important figure in this is the land. Before the grain turns into a loaf of bread, people of many professions work. At present, a grain grower with a plow and a workhorse does not exist for a long time. Many of the bread-growing processes are carried out by machines.

Growing crops

Oats, barley, wheat, rye belong to this category of agricultural plants. How is bread grown? In order for a useful product to always be on the table, specialists in many professions need to work hard. Cultivation of grain crops should be carried out, adhering to the following activities:

• It is necessary to carry out basic and pre-sowing soil preparation.
• Depositnecessary fertilizers.
• Prepare the seeds and sow them.
• Properly and regularly care for plants.
• Harvest crops on time, avoiding losses.

Sowing time

Depending on the time of sowing, grain crops are winter and spring. Sowing of the first is carried out in the fall, spring - in the spring. Growing crops, it is very important to determine the timing when seeds can be planted in the soil. If these are winter crops, three to four shoots should form on the plants before the onset of winter cold. Therefore, it is necessary to sow seeds in the first decade of September, sometimes the end of August is chosen for this. Spring crops should be sown, focusing on the condition of the soil. The best time is April, middle or end of the month.

Tillage

How is bread grown? Before sowing crops, you need to plow the land. Plant residues after harvesting last year should not remain on its surface. This is a very important agrotechnical measure, as a result of which the soil is not subject to erosion and a lot of moisture is retained in it. Simultaneously with plowing, fertilizers are applied to the soil. If spring crops are grown on the field, soil harrowing is carried out in spring, if winter crops - cultivation.

How to plant seeds?

Crops are planted in prepared soil. Planting material must be undamaged and meet the requirements of the standard. To avoid infectionseeds, they are dressed. Winter crops are grown from last year's seeds. After sowing, planting material must be rolled in order to make contact with the ground.

How to properly care?

To get a high yield, crops need regular care. To do this, the following activities should be carried out:

• Protect plants from disease and pest damage. For this, fields with grain crops are treated with chemicals.
• Remove weeds in time so that they do not drown out cultivated plants. For this, herbicides are used.
• Feed cereals with nitrogen compounds.

Harvesting methods

This agrotechnical measure for cereals is carried out in two ways:

• Direct combining. This is the most efficient cleaning method. It is carried out at grain moisture content of 14-17%, and also in the case when 95% of all plants have reached maturity.
• Separate (two-phase) way. This is how the harvest of clogged and ripening bread at different times is carried out.
• Three-phase method, in which cereals are cut into swaths, picked up from all over the field and transported to specially equipped premises for further threshing. But this method is rarely used due to the lack of machines.

How was bread grown before?

Even during the Stone Age, people noticed that some plants have hearty grains, which can also be stored for a long time. They were cerealswild form: wheat, rye, barley. Primitive tribes settled next to such fields. Over time, people invented tools for working the land, harvesting grain and processing it into flour.

How was bread grown in the old days? First, the ground was prepared. This work was very hard. Most of the territory of Ancient Russia was covered with mighty, impenetrable forests. The peasants first uprooted the trees, cleared the land of powerful roots. The compacted soil did not receive the air necessary for the life of plants. The only way to revive the land was by ploughing. The peasants did this work with a plow or roe deer, which they made themselves.

The plow appeared much later. It was intended for cutting the layers of the earth and turning it over. After plowing, the soil was harrowed with a harrow, which was a log with long branches. All clods were broken, large stones were removed. The land was ready for use.

Sowing grain in the old days

Spring was considered the beginning of the year in Russia. It depended on the sowing work whether the coming year would be full or hungry. Seeds were stored very carefully so that they did not germinate before the allotted time. For more than one year, the grain for planting was not stored, otherwise it would not have the strength to germinate.

The time of sowing the peasants determined according to folk signs, observing the phenomena of nature. For example, if the level of the first water was high during the flooding of the rivers, spring cereals should have been sown early, if not, late.

Daysowing was considered the most responsible and solemn of the year. How is bread grown? The person who first went into the field was determined. He was barefoot, wore a festive red or white shirt, a box of seeds hung on his chest. He scattered them evenly while reciting a prayer. Sowed mainly rye, as it was more resistant to weather changes and cold.

Peasants were also engaged in sowing grain crops in autumn. Such cereals were called winter cereals and were sown before the onset of cold weather. Before winter, the plants had time to germinate. If the weather was warm for a long time, cattle were released into the winter field, which ate the sprouts, and the plants took root faster. In the future, the peasants relied on the fall of a large amount of snow, which was a shelter for crops. You can see how bread was grown in the pictures below. The illustrations for Mikhail Stelmakh's poem "The Harvest" depict the harvest.

Harvest

Bread harvesting was sometimes considered very responsible. It was important to do it on time, and that the weather was good. The farmers determined the harvest date based on their observations. Grain for maturity was determined with teeth: if it crunches, then it is ripe.

Harvesting grain required a lot of labor, so it was done by the whole family. It wasn't just the adults who went out into the field. How bread is grown was not a secret for children. They were trained to work from early childhood. If the family could not cope with the work, they called the neighbors for help. It was not easy to harvest the grain, but this work brought joy to people: the process was accompaniedplayful songs. All work was done by hand using sickles and scythes.

Modern children, especially those whose parents are not engaged in agricultural labor, will be helped to learn how bread is grown, stories. A lot of them have been written. For example, "Three rolls and one bagel." This work was written by Leo Tolstoy.

How was the grain threshed?

Harvest ended by mid-August. Ears tied in sheaves were taken from the field to dry. For this we used:

• Ovin - was an outbuilding, which housed up to 500 sheaves. The structure consisted of a pit with a furnace without a chimney and an upper tier for storing sheaves.
• Riga - a building larger than a barn. She was equipped with an oven. It can dry five thousand sheaves at the same time.

After the grain was dried, the sheaves were taken to the threshing floor (a plot on the ground, enclosed by a fence). Here he was kept, threshed. It was the hardest job. They hit the sheaves with a threshing machine until not a single grain remained in the ears. Threshing was not always done immediately. This work could be done in autumn and even with the onset of winter. The threshed grain had to be winnowed. To do this, a man stood in the wind and stirred it with a shovel. Then the grain was taken to the mill for grinding into flour, from which the housewives baked bread, which in Russia has always been considered the treasure of all the people. That is why in our country bread is treated with respect and reverence.