How to Grow Buckwheat

Fagopyrum esculentum · Also called: Kuttu, Kotu, Ogal, Phapar, Sarrasin, Blé noir, Alforfón, Trigo sarraceno

A dense low buckwheat crop in full flower filling a field to the treeline, covered in masses of small white and pink flowers held above broad soft green leaves, with reddish stems visible at the front edge under a cloudy sky.

Photo: Robbie Morrison, CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Buckwheat is the crop you can still plant when something else has failed. It goes from seed to harvest in about two and a half months, grows on poor, acid, stony ground where cereals give nothing, needs almost no fertiliser, and smothers weeds while it grows. Russia and China produce the most, and it is a staple in the hill districts of Nepal, Bhutan and northern India, in Ukraine and in parts of eastern Europe and Japan. It contains no gluten, which makes it valuable to people who cannot eat wheat. Its difficulty is that it never ripens evenly: the same plant carries open flowers and ripe seed at the same moment for weeks, so every harvest is a compromise between seed that has not filled yet and seed already falling on the ground.

Growing Buckwheat, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Prepare a rough seedbed on poor or ordinary ground, and do not enrich it, because buckwheat is one of the few crops that prefers hard living.
2. Choose and get your seed — Use fresh seed of a known kind, because buckwheat seed loses the ability to sprout quickly and old seed gives a thin stand.
3. Sow the seed — Sow shallow into warm moist ground once frost has passed, fairly thickly, and expect the crop up within a week.
4. Water — Buckwheat is usually grown without irrigation and the two moments that matter are establishment and flowering.
5. Weeds and feeding — Buckwheat does most of the weeding itself, and the main job is resisting the urge to feed it.
6. Flowering, and the bees — Buckwheat flowers for weeks and depends on insects to set seed, so this is the stage where bees decide your yield.
7. Harvest — Cut when roughly three quarters of the seed has turned brown, in the cool damp of early morning, because ripe seed falls at a touch.
8. Thresh, dry and store the seed — Thresh gently, dry the seed down properly and store it sealed, because buckwheat is easily cracked and does not keep if damp.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: A tall lush crop that has fallen flat across the field after wind or rain, with stems bent at the base and the seed heads lying on the soil.

It likely means: The crop was too well fed or sown on rich ground. Buckwheat has hollow brittle stems and grows soft and tall wherever there is plenty of nitrogen.

Do this: Do not apply nitrogen to buckwheat, ever, and avoid sowing it straight after a heavily manured crop.

If you see: A field that flowers heavily for weeks and sets very little seed, with plenty of white flowers and very few brown grains forming behind them.

It likely means: Usually too few insects working the field, or hot dry weather during flowering, or both. Buckwheat needs insects to move the flower dust and sets poorly in heat.

Do this: Keep hives near the field or arrange with a beekeeper, since buckwheat is an excellent bee crop and both of you gain.

If you see: A large quantity of loose black seed lying on the soil after cutting or carting, and noticeably less in the sack than the standing crop suggested.

It likely means: The crop was cut or handled in dry heat. Ripe buckwheat seed detaches at the lightest touch, and shattering is the main loss in this crop.

Do this: Cut in the cool damp of early morning or while dew is still on the crop, never in the heat of the afternoon.

If you see: The whole crop blackened and collapsed within a day or two of a cold night, with soft stems and leaves that have gone limp and dark.

It likely means: Frost. Buckwheat is killed outright by frost at any stage, and there is no recovery from it.

Do this: Count your frost-free days before sowing and do not sow unless there are at least about seventy left.

If you see: A thin uneven stand with bare patches, weeds coming through the gaps, and plants of noticeably different sizes across the field.

It likely means: Old seed, cold soil at sowing, dry ground, or seed left uncovered on the surface for birds.

Do this: Use fresh seed, because buckwheat loses the ability to sprout faster than cereal seed and old seed is a common cause.

If you see: A large proportion of broken and split grains after threshing, with pale kernel showing through the dark hulls.

It likely means: The crop was threshed too hard or when too dry. Buckwheat seed has a brittle hull and cracks far more easily than cereal grain.

Do this: Thresh gently by beating rather than with force, and stop as soon as the seed is off.

If you see: Stored seed with a sharp bitter or paint-like smell, tasting soapy, and flour from it that nobody wants to eat.

It likely means: The seed was stored damp or too warm, or it was cracked before storage. Buckwheat is higher in oil than cereals and goes rancid rather than simply mouldy.

Do this: Dry until a seed cannot be dented with a fingernail before storing anything.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your seed is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Seventy to ninety days, start to finish. Nothing else is that fast.
Count your frost-free days before sowing. Frost kills it outright.
Do not feed it. Fed buckwheat falls flat and gives leaf, not seed.
Poor stony acid ground suits it. That is the whole point of it.
Sow thick. A dense stand smothers the weeds for you.
It needs bees. No insects working the field means very little seed.
It never ripens evenly. Flowers and ripe seed together for weeks.
Cut at about three quarters brown seed. Waiting costs you more.
Cut in the cool morning. Ripe seed falls off at a touch.
Thresh gently and store it whole, because it goes rancid milled.

Test Yourself: Identification

What is this dense low crop covered in small white flowers, with no ears or heads anywhere on it?

Why does this plant have white flowers at the top and dark seeds lower down at the same time?

What is this crop doing on a stony hillside where the neighbours grow nothing?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Very little is registered for use on buckwheat in most countries, because it is a minor crop almost everywhere it is grown. This guide therefore concentrates on sowing date, seed rate and harvest timing, which are what a grower actually controls, and says to ask a licensed dealer rather than assuming anything is available.
Every timing in this guide is given in days and seasons rather than in dates, because the whole crop is defined by the gap between your last spring frost and your first autumn one. Counting those days for your own place is the single most useful thing you can do before sowing.
Common buckwheat and the Tartary or bitter buckwheat grown in the high Himalaya are different species with different hardiness, different bitterness and different handling. This guide covers common buckwheat, and if you are growing at very high altitude you may well have the other one.
Yields depend heavily on insect activity during flowering, which is outside your control and varies enormously between places and seasons. A guide cannot tell you what the bees near you will do.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Fagopyrum esculentum Moench — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Fagopyrum esculentum (EPPO code FAGES) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for buckwheat — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Fagopyrum esculentum (buckwheat) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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