Harvesting Lentils From Our Home Garden

We devoted 100 square feet of bed space to our lentil trial this year. In that space, we seeded about 1500 lentil plants giving us an average spacing of 15 plants per square foot. This density seemed to provide good ground cover without causing too much competition between plants. Beds were irrigated with the same drip irrigation system we use for all of our vegetable garden beds.

What was our total yield? When the threshing was all wrapped up we had 3.56kg or 7.83 lbs of lentils. There was some loss from a few mistakes in the drying and threshing process this time around, so I’m confident we can beat those numbers next season. For now, it’s just nice to have a benchmark to use for our production estimates going forward.

If you’re curious how these harvest numbers compare to large scale agriculture, average yield for large green lentils in our province is 1546 lbs/acre. Our yield from this 100 square foot test plot equates to 3412 lbs/acre.

Lentils are obviously not the crop to grow in your garden if you want the highest economic return. We’re getting into grain and pulse crops now because we’re already growing all of our own vegetables and these threshing challenges keep things interesting. We also want to eat grains and pulses but there are no sustainable sources in our area from which we can buy these products.

If you have experience growing lentils by hand, please leave a comment and let us know how it went.

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[mysticmeadow]

You just convinced me to keep buying Bob's Red Mill Organic lentils. That is way to much work for me. LOL

[seajelly]

Well done! It's mind-blowing to me that lentils were one of the first agricultural crops. Thanks, ancestors!!!

[slashbat]

I suddenly appreciate how a 500g bag of lentils is only R30

[ofrecentvintage]

Lentils are a staple of my diet and I don't grow them precisely because of the harvest process.

[icybear]

wow I never even thought of lentil’s processing stages, all I knew about them they are affordable and you can find them almost at every grocery store. thanks for sharing

[mar-nyan]

That’s so impressive! Makes me appreciate how affordable store bought lentils are even more haha

[LightLadd]

I like it!. We use 5 gallon pails and baseball bats to separate legumes from their pods, I know this sounds rather violent but its really quite gentle and effective, we just let the legumes dry on the plant then stuff them into the pails to about 75% full and just start gently tamping with the bat, in about 5-10 minutes the legumes are at the bottom of the pail and the plant matter/pods are on the top, this works very well and is quick.

[shorteelan]

I need this! Every neighborhood should have a community thresher.

[gabyflores]

Man. Self sustainability is trutly a rich man's sport.

[bradleykurtz]

I LOVE to see people making their own machines to facilitate and automate self sustaining practices.

[LaurelCanyonMojo]

I have used a pillow case to pulverize the dries greens/pods lentils or beans will fall to the bottom

[rameron]

Would love a vid of how you made the thresher if possible

[heavymetalbassist]

Yall fancy, I just hit with a dowel then pour in front of a fan

[sarahdemers]

I just realized I live just down the street from you. Awesome to see a local guy making content of this type to educate others! Super cool!

[dheerajreddymusku]

In INDIA, lentils plants are dried and bundled, they are hit on a stone multiple times where seeds and sometimes pods fall off, then from a height the seeds with soats are poured down, with high wind blowing in one direction, the seeds fall down while seed coats flyoff

[antonylawrence]

So that’s what a lentil plant looks like !

[smallfootprint]

Wow! Growing your own lentils. Amazing.

[kousueki]

your video has inspired me to just buy lentils at supermarket

[Citizen-of-theworld]

That is a mammoth effort. Could never justify the effort to reward ratio but have to commend the effort in building that very effective thresher!

[thenorthernwill]

Not a fan of lentils really, but I'm really impressed with your ingenuity, dedication and perseverance. Really inspirational video.