West African Millet

This year I'm working on learning how to grow various grain crops. Among them is West African Millet. I purchased a packet of seed, split it with another gardener, and we both gave it a try. 

Millet is a grass, so I chose a sunny location with well drained soil. Regretfully the soil wasn't very improved, so the millet wasn't great. But hey, I actual got the stuff to grow and produce heads. Not bad. 

My plants only got 3' high......my friend's got 5' high. I only got one head per plant.....my friend got 1 to 3. My plants were thin, hers were bushier. So it looks like we both need to work on building better soil in our grain growing location, me especially. 

Importantly what I learned is that I can indeed grow millet here on the homestead. And while it struggles in hardscrabble soil, it does survive and produce seed. Next time I'll plant it in good soil and see how much that improves the millet. I'm definitely going to add this millet to my grain crops.