Organic Winter Rye Seed, Cereal Rye Cover Crop, Non-GMO, 1 lb

I bought these seeds for a cover crop for my raised bed plot in our community garden. They had good germination, but verify your coverage as the package barely covered my space, which I think is about 8'x18', I had a nice thick covering that we cut back a couple of times early in the spring and left the clippings to enrich the soil. It was pretty easy to cut it back tight to the ground and rake out the surface roots in the spring to make planting easier. Did a great job of blocking out weeds so spring prep was much easier than years when I didn't plant a cover crop and I think as a result I didn't have many weeds during the growing season. My plot was very productive this summer so I beleive it was a positive for my soil.

Cat loves it - she's the final judge. Good value for the money. They don't all sprout, but, the decent cost of the package outweighs that.

I planted this in a new flower bed that would have sat empty over winter. It filled in very well and prevented weeds. I plan to cut it off and leave it lay for mulch and plant new perennials right through it this spring.

I bought 4 varieties of cat grasses from this vendor. They were all prepared at the same time in the same way using the same soil mix. A sample was frozen overnight, then soaked in room temperature water for 24-hours, then finally spread over the soil mixture and then loosely covered with about 2 cm of soil. I have attached 2 pictures of the particular grass reviewed (Winter Rye) and also two pictures of all of the grasses together in their separate containers (wheat, 2 x rye, barley and oats) . They rye sample was planted identically in two different containers to see if that made a difference - which it didn't - which rules out any differences due to containers. What you see here is about one week of growth. All were planted in the same density so the differences in pattern are not due to planting one more densely than the others. The wheat is astounding - covering the entire growth area with no bare patches whatsoever. The oat grass is the least dense and vigorous variety. The barley seed seems to attract animals outside to dig holes in the mixture and also climb into the container and mat down the grass. and the rye grass is in between the vigor of the wheat and oat. All containers were grown in the same area so the only reason why animals would prefer to dig up and sit on one container and ignore the other 4 is due to the grass itself. I'm leaving the exact same text for all reviews, but the stars will differ. The photos of the specific grass will be only attached to the specific review but the photos of all 4 varieties will be in all. There is no feedback left for flavor because I didn't taste them myself and the grass is still to new for my cats to be comfortable with it. They are curious and sniff at it, but they still both prefer to eat the regular grass on my lawn. However, all of these purchased grasses are now at the stage where cats can eat them. All 4 varieties are great with the wheat in my particular order astounding. I bought the largest quantities available from this for each which was 10bs each of barley, oats, and wheat and 5lbs of rye. Look up the other Thunder Acres varieties if you are interested in the particular pictures of that particular seed.

Perfect

I haven't had a lot of luck getting this rye to germinate. I planted it alongside some winter wheat; the wheat came up very well, but the rye: not so much -- very thin compared to the wheat. I tried 3 different plantings (maybe it was too warm the first time) but none of them did very well. On the plus side, I ground some of it into flour and made whole-rye bread with it -- that turned out very well. (Heavy and dense, as I expected, but good flavor). So this is good stuff if you plan to eat it, but not so good if you want to plant it.

Grew very well as a cover crop for my garden beds. Getting more for this year.

Update: increased to 5 stars. At the end of the day, it did sprout well and my sprouted and then fermented rye turned out really good. The broken pieces did not affect anything. Will be buying it again, just bigger package. Sprouted well. Gave 4 stars because there is quite a few broken pieces of grains in the mix. I would say maybe 1-2% was broken pieces. It is OK if you just buying it for planting. In my case, I bought it to make some sprouted rye malt. Which means I sprouted seeds and then have to dry it and grind. So I ended up with some unsprouted soaked pieces being milled. Not the end of the world, but next time I might look somewhere else to buy this grain.