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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-687
Foxtail Millet
Setaria italica
Foxtail millet is a fast-growing tufted annual grass whose small round grain is cooked like rice or ground into flour, and whose non-glutinous cultivars suit coeliac diets. In North America the grain mostly ends up as birdseed, but it is also a working livestock feed - fed whole to poultry, cut green or dried into hay for cattle - and the dense shallow root system holds soil against erosion. It needs full sun, matures in as little as sixty days, and tolerates dry ground better than almost any other cereal, though it stops growing if the soil turns waterlogged and it should not be planted next to wheat, which it can pass a damaging mite and virus to.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- Not yet recorded
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5.5–8.3
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 3–7.2 ft
- Mature spread
- 4 in
- Plant spacing
- 10–12 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Adzuki Bean
Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H.Ohashi
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African Eggplant
Solanum aethiopicum
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African Rice
Oryza glaberrima
African Rice is a West African grain crop domesticated from a wild relative along the Niger river around 3,000 years ago, still grown as…
Herbaceous
Agrimony
Agrimonia eupatoria
Agrimony is a slender herbaceous perennial of sunny, disturbed ground across Europe and western Asia, grown mainly for the tannin-rich leaves…
Herbaceous · USDA 5–9
Alfalfa
Medicago sativa
Alfalfa is a deep-rooted perennial legume grown worldwide as one of the richest forage crops available, its taproot running six metres or…
Herbaceous · USDA 4–11
Aloe Vera
Aloe vera
Aloe Vera is a stemless, clump-forming succulent with thick, spiny-edged leaves that store a clear gel used to soothe burns, wounds and skin…
Herbaceous · USDA 10–12
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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