How to grow Niger seed (noug)

Get seed from a trusted source — this season's harvest, kept dry. Old noug seed is oily and goes stale and weak in store, so last year's leftover seed often comes up poorly.

Look at the seed: good noug is plump, shiny and black, all roughly the same size. Reject seed full of dust, chaff, grey or shrivelled empty seeds, or other crop and weed seeds.

Rub a pinch between your palms and blow gently — heavy, solid seed stays in your hand; light, empty husks blow away. A lot of light chaff means a weak, low-quality batch.

Test it before you trust it: wrap about 100 seeds in a damp cloth, keep it warm and damp (not dripping) for a week, then count how many sprout. If far fewer than most sprout, get fresh seed before sowing day.

Keep the seed dry, cool and off the floor, away from food, water and children until you sow.

Watch the clay's moisture. Work it when a handful crumbles as you squeeze it — not when it is baked hard (too dry to break) and not when it smears and sticks to your hoe (too wet). On heavy clay this good window is short, so be ready.

Rough-plough or dig to break the big clods, then knock them down to a finer, crumbly surface. Tiny noug seed sown onto big clods falls into air pockets and comes up patchy.

Clear old crop stalks and big weeds off the surface so your scattered seed lands on soil, not trash.

Level the bed roughly so water spreads instead of pooling — but a slightly rough surface and the clay's own cracks actually help hold the small seed and the first rain.

Pick a field near bee forage — flowering bushes, other flowering crops, natural veld, or your own beehives. Bees are the only thing that will fill your yellow heads with seed, so you want plenty of them close by.

If you can, keep the field away from the daily flight-lines of flocking seed-birds — the routes big flocks of quelea and weavers (small seed-eating birds that move in clouds) follow between roost and feeding grounds. A field right under that path takes the worst bird damage.

A patch near homesteads, paths and daily activity is easier to guard — birds shy from people and noise, so a field you pass often is a field you can defend.

Plan not to spray insecticide on this land or nearby crops once noug nears flowering — if you or your neighbours keep bees, keep them safe for when the yellow heads open.

Sow onto a moist, rough seedbed — right after a wetting rain, when the clay is damp a finger deep. Noug seed is small with little food inside, so it must land on soil that will sprout it quickly.

Mix the seed with dry sand or ash — about one part seed to four or five parts sand (say a tin of seed to a bucket of sand). This bulks up the tiny seed so you can see where it lands and spread it far more evenly.

Split the seed-and-sand into a few equal heaps, one per strip of the field, so no strip gets a double dose. Aim for the whole field at about 4–8 kg of seed per hectare — a fairly thin scatter, because it is very easy to sow noug far too thick.

Scatter it by hand in overlapping passes, walking a steady grid so no strip is bare and none is caked thick. Throw with a low, wide sweep so wind does not pile it in one place.

Cover it shallowly — drag a light branch, thorn bush or harrow across the surface so the seed is just barely buried, no deeper than 1–2 cm (about the length of your fingernail). Buried deep in heavy clay, the small seed runs out of strength before it reaches the light.

From about 5 days to 2 weeks after sowing, walk the field and look for the fine, thread-like seedlings coming up — noug starts with two small seed-leaves, easy to miss on dark clay.

Judge the evenness: is there a light, even fuzz of seedlings across the whole bed, or are there bare patches and thin streaks? Note where the gaps are.

A thin but even cover is fine — noug branches out and fills in. What you are hunting for is bald patches where almost nothing came up.

If bare patches are large, re-sow them now — scatter a little more seed over the thin areas and drag it in lightly, while the soil is still moist and there is time. Small thin spots you can leave; the crop will close over them.

Weed from about 3 weeks after sowing, as soon as you can walk the field and tell crop from weed — do not wait for the weeds to get big.

Because noug is broadcast (no rows), weed by hand-pulling and light hand-hoeing among the plants — you cannot run a hoe down a straight row. Take out the weeds and leave the noug.

Hoe shallowly. Noug roots sit near the surface; deep chopping cuts them and topples the plants.

Get the weeds out whole, roots and all where you can — snapped-off tops of many weeds just sprout again.

If weeds keep coming, weed a second time a week or two later, before the crop closes over. Once noug branches and shades the ground, new weeds struggle and you can stop.

Watch for broomrape while you weed — a parasite weed that taps into noug roots and steals its food. It shows as short, fleshy, pale yellow-brown stalks with no green leaves, poking up in clusters at the base of your plants, while the noug above looks stunted and yellow. Pull and destroy these spikes before they flower and seed — never let them shed seed, which haunts the field for years.

Only feed if the soil is poor or the crop looks pale and weak. On decent clay noug often needs nothing — do not spend on fertiliser it will not repay.

If you do feed, apply a modest amount of nitrogen at about 3–4 weeks after sowing, while the crop is growing fast and still short. Your recommendation gives the amount for your field — keep it light.

Because noug also answers to phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S), a compound fertiliser carrying N with some P and S is a good choice if you have it — but still apply it sparingly.

Scatter (broadcast) it evenly over the crop when the soil is moist (after a weeding or light rain), so it washes down to the roots instead of gassing off into the air. Keep the grains off wet leaves, where they stick and scorch.

Wash your hands after handling fertiliser, and keep it away from food, water and children.

From about 7 weeks after sowing, when the first yellow heads open, treat the field as a bee sanctuary until flowering ends (around 13 weeks).

Do not spray any insecticide while the flowers are open — it kills the bees that set your seed, and there is no crop without them. If you ever must treat a pest, do it before flowering starts or after it ends, never during.

Keep bees close and busy: leave flowering weeds and wild plants at the field edges as extra bee food, and if you keep hives, have them beside the field now.

Walk the field on a warm, calm, sunny mid-morning and simply watch — you should see and hear bees working the yellow heads. Plenty of bee traffic means seed is being set.

If you see very few bees, do not reach for chemicals — instead protect every one you have: stop all spraying nearby, and keep wild forage close so bees stay in your field.

If you irrigate, water every 7–10 days from about 7 weeks after sowing through flowering and early seed-fill — keep the clay evenly moist, never bone-dry then flooded.

The clay holds water well, so check before you water: push a finger in and water when it is drying below the surface, not while it is still damp.

Aim for steady moisture. It is the swings — hard dry, then soaked — that shed flowers and shrivel seed.

As flowering ends and the heads start to fill and colour, hold moisture steady a while longer, then begin easing off as maturity nears (see the next stage).

Start the day the seed begins to fill (from about 13 weeks after sowing) and keep it up every day until harvest — a few unguarded days can cost the crop.

Be in the field at the flock hours — early morning and late afternoon — when birds feed hardest. Look for clouds of small seed-eating birds (quelea, weavers) settling onto the heads, and heads left stripped and empty where they have fed.

Make noise and movement: shout, bang tins, crack a whip or plastic sheet, use clappers and rattles. Keep moving — birds learn where you are not.

Add fixed scares: hang strips of reflective tape, old cassette tape, foil or bright cloth on lines across the field, and set up scarecrows — but move them often, because flocks quickly learn a scare that never changes.

Net small plots if you can — a net thrown over a small stand of noug is the surest guard of all.

Team up with neighbours so you all scare at once — otherwise you just chase the flock onto their field and they chase it back onto yours. And harvest promptly once the heads ripen: the fastest way to end bird losses is to get the seed off the field.

From about 16–18 weeks after sowing, as most heads have filled and begun to turn yellow-brown, cut back the watering.

Let the crop dry down naturally in the field — you are now aiming for hard, dry seed and brittle heads, not more growth.

Stop watering entirely as the heads colour and the seed hardens, so the crop is ready to cut at first ripeness (see harvest).

Watch for ripeness: the leaves and most heads turn yellow-brown and dry, the small seeds are hard and black, and the heads just begin to open. That is the signal — cut now, do not wait for the whole field to go bone-dry.

Cut or pull the plants in the cool of the morning, when the heads are damp with dew and less brittle — they shed far less seed than in the dry heat of midday.

Handle the cut plants gently and as little as possible — every rough shake spills seed. Carry them heads-up on a sheet if you can.

Tie the plants into small bundles (stooks) and stand or lay them on a clean surface, mat or sheet, heads up and off the bare ground, to finish drying.

Let them field-dry a few days until the seed is hard and rattles, then thresh (see the next stage). Waiting for the crop to fully dry standing only loses the seed to shatter and birds.

Thresh only once the stooked heads are properly field-dry — the seed should bite hard with no give. Damp heads do not release their seed cleanly.

Beat or tread the dry heads on a clean tarp, mat or swept hard floor — lay them out and thresh with a stick or by treading — to knock the small black seed free. Work on a sheet so none is lost into the ground.

Winnow to clean it: on a breezy day, pour the seed slowly from a height (or toss it in a basket) so the wind carries off the light chaff, husk and dust while the heavier seed falls straight down. Repeat until the seed is clean.

Dry the clean seed hard in the sun on a mat or tarp — never on bare ground, which pushes damp back in and adds dirt and mould. Turn it so it dries evenly, and cover it if rain or heavy dew threatens.

Test before you bag: well-dried noug bites hard with no give — it should crack, not squash. If it still dents, or feels soft or cool-damp, dry it more before storing, or the oily seed will go rancid and mouldy in the bag.

Store the dry seed cool, dry and off the floor in a clean, sealed container — an airtight bag or tin starves storage pests of air. Check the store now and then and act early if you see trouble.