Hordeum vulgare
Origin: Corvallis, Oregon
Improvement status: Evolutionary population
Seeds per packet: ~80
Germination tested 10/2025: 99%
Life cycle: Annual and Biennial
We are super excited to be offering this seeds, which come our way thanks to the great work and generosity of our friend Dr. Brigid Meints of Oregon State University. Brigid is the biggest booster of barley you can find, and we've relished tasting her collaborations with various chefs and bakers through the years at Culinary Breeding Network showcases across the country. Her passion for naked barley, in particular, is infections. Like us, she loves naked (or hull-less) barley because it needs so little processing to become delicious and nutritious food for humans.
This blend is the result of years of painstaking work, much of which — to be perfectly frank — basically goes over our heads. After reading extensively about it, I'm pretty sure I understand what all went into it, but it's pretty mind-blowing. For people who don't know what "haploid doubling" or "homozygous recessive" means, the full explanation of this population will leave you scratching your head. But for those of you who do, or who are interested in learning, we'll reproduce the whole OSU write-up about this blend below. While there was certainly laboratory work involved, this population is entirely non-GMO and the result of what's considered traditional plant breeding, even if it involves some complicated modern techniques (like the aforementioned "haploid doubling").
In layman's terms, this population contains 753 lines derived from 33 crosses involving 28 different parental lines and 40 different grandparental lines. The grandparents were all genetically diverse themselves, and included lots of variation in terms of growth habit (spring, winter, and facultative), inflorescence type (2-row, 6-row), plant height (semi-dwarf, standard), seed color (blue, brown, purple, white), and seed starch type (normal, waxy). This diverse gene pool no doubt also contains variation of many uncharacterized traits including aroma, disease resistance, drought tolerance, flavor, malting quality, nutritional factors, and yield.
Barley is a self-pollinating crop with very low rates of out-crossing. Because of how these lines were bred (the haploid doubling), each seed will grow true. This is, in plant breeders' terminology, a heterogenous mixture of homozygous lines. It can therefore be grown continuously as a blend, and subjected to natural or artificial selection on a population scale — or certain plants can be selected and planted individually as pure lines, or intentionally crossed with others. With Brigid and the team at OSU having done so much of the work already, this population is a novice plant breeder's dream, ripe for future work. And for farmers simply interested in growing something beautiful and delicious, it's already ready for the field and the kitchen or bakery.
GROWING TIPS: Because it contains a mix of spring, winter, and facultative (which can grow to maturity planted either in spring or fall) types, you can plant this either in spring or fall, or both. You can start early in flats — at least for your first grow-out, when you only have a packet's worth of seeds — but barley is best grown direct-sown half an inch or an inch deep. Rows can be spaced between 6 inches and a foot apart, with individual seeds anywhere between 3 inches and a foot apart, depending on your preferences (and how much weeding or cultivating you're able to do between rows and plants). Once you scale up, the recommended broadcasting rate for this blend is approximately 100 grams of seed per 100 square foot area. Harvest once the crop is golden and dry, and the seeds resist cracking in your teeth.
Here's the full write-up about how this blend was developed: Here (link downloads document)
NOTE: Photo from Oregon State University.
