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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-685
Pearl Millet
Cenchrus americanus
Pearl Millet is an erect annual grass reaching up to 3 m, grown across the driest and hottest cereal-growing regions on earth, from the Sahel through India and beyond. Its grain is ground into flour, bread, porridge and couscous and eaten sweet raw by children, while its forage is cut for hay and silage or grazed directly, standing in for maize at 50 to 100 percent of the ration for pigs, poultry and rabbits without hurting performance. It tolerates acid, sandy and saline ground where other cereals fail and does not produce the prussic acid that makes sorghum dangerous to graze after drought, though the plant itself can still accumulate toxic nitrate levels under the same drought stress.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 2–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5.5–8
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 3–9.8 ft
- Mature spread
- 24–35 in
- Plant spacing
- 9–12 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
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Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H.Ohashi
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African Eggplant
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Agrimony
Agrimonia eupatoria
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Alfalfa
Medicago sativa
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Aloe Vera
Aloe vera
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Alsike Clover
Trifolium hybridum
Alsike Clover fixes nitrogen in wet, acid ground too cold and heavy for red clover to thrive in, and its flowers keep bees working all season…
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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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