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How to Grow Sorghum

Sorghum bicolor · Also called: great millet, guinea corn, jowar, jwari, cholam, durra, mtama, sorgho

Grain type sorghum panicles standing in a field.

Photo: Daniel Georg Döhne (Bugdream), CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Sorghum is the crop for dry, hot, hard country. Where maize dies of thirst, sorghum waits and then carries on. For millions of families in the dry parts of Africa and Asia, it is the difference between eating and not eating in a bad year. It is one of the most drought hardy food grains in the world.

Growing Sorghum, Stage by Stage

  1. 1. Get the land ready — Loosen the soil, take out the weeds, and catch every drop of rain you can.
  2. 2. Choose and get your seed — Local varieties can be saved and resown. Choose for your rain, and for birds.
  3. 3. Sow the seed — Shallow, into moist soil, several seeds per spot, then thin later.
  4. 4. Water — Sorghum handles dry weather better than any other main grain. Do not panic when it looks bad.
  5. 5. Weeds and feeding — Weed early. In dry country a weed is not just stealing food, it is stealing water.
  6. 6. Keep the birds off — This is the biggest problem in sorghum. Plan for it before you plant, not after.
  7. 7. Know when to harvest — Cut when the grain is hard and the head has changed colour, and do not leave it standing.
  8. 8. Dry it and store it so you do not lose it — Dry it hard, pack it tight, keep it whole. Grind flour only as you need it.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Small plants with bright pink, purple or white flowers growing between your sorghum, while the sorghum around them is stunted, yellow and dying even though rain has come.

It likely means: Striga, also called witchweed. It attaches underground to your sorghum roots and drinks from them. By the time you see the flowers it has been feeding for weeks.

Do this: Pull out every striga plant by hand before it flowers and sets seed. One plant can make tens of thousands of seeds that survive in your soil for years.

If you see: Heads that are bare on one side or bare at the top. Grain gone but the head still standing. Flocks of small birds lifting off the field when you approach.

It likely means: Birds. This is the biggest single cause of sorghum loss in most growing areas.

Do this: Guard the field at dawn and in the late afternoon. Those are the main feeding times.

If you see: Grains on the head replaced by swollen, hard, dark grey or black bodies. When crushed, they burst into a black powder. Sometimes the whole head is black.

It likely means: A smut disease. It travels on the seed and on infected soil from one season to the next.

Do this: Never save seed from a head or a field that had this.

If you see: Small holes in a line across a young leaf as it unrolls. Later, the centre of a young plant dies and pulls out easily while the outer leaves stay green. Later still, stems snap over in wind, and you find tunnels inside.

It likely means: A stem borer. A caterpillar has tunnelled inside the stem and eaten the growing point.

Do this: Pull out and destroy plants whose centre has died. The caterpillar is inside.

If you see: Heads that look normal from a distance but are almost empty. The husks are there but flat, with no grain. Damage is worst on the field that flowered latest.

It likely means: Very likely a tiny insect that attacks the flower and stops the grain forming, or a dry spell that hit exactly at flowering. Both look the same at harvest.

Do this: Open a few flat husks and look. If you find a tiny orange or reddish grub inside, it is the insect. If the husk is simply empty and clean, it was drought or heat.

If you see: The older, lower leaves yellowing from the tip while the top stays green. The plants short and pale.

It likely means: The crop is short of nitrogen. Very common on the tired soils where sorghum is usually grown.

Do this: Put manure, compost or a nitrogen fertiliser between the rows now and cover it with soil.

If you see: Grey, black, pink or white fuzzy growth on the grain in the head, usually after rain fell on a ripe or nearly ripe crop. Grain that looks discoloured or chalky.

It likely means: Grain mould. It gets in when a ripe head sits in wet weather.

Do this: Do not eat badly mouldy grain and do not feed it to your animals. Some moulds make poisons that cooking does not destroy.

If you see: Small beetles or moths in the store. Grain with holes. Fine powder at the bottom of the container. Webbing on the surface.

It likely means: Storage insects, usually brought in with the grain or left in the store from last season.

Do this: Take the grain out and spread it in the sun again. Sun and heat knock the insects back, and this is the most widely used traditional control there is.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like, and knowing what your grain 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.

Test Yourself: Identification

Which crop's seed head is this?

Which crop's seed head is this?

This tall crop with heads at the top is which one?

This tall crop with heads at the top is which one?

Two young crops both have wide grass leaves. One is sorghum. Which?

Two young crops both have wide grass leaves. One is sorghum. Which?

Honest Limits of This Guide

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Sources