Grain · Polygonaceae
When to plant buckwheat
Ready in ten weeks from sowing, which makes it the crop for a gap in the rotation. Not a cereal at all, and a favourite of pollinators while it flowers.
Sow direct
1 week after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
70-90
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Tender
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make buckwheat plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 1 week after the last frost.
- Expect 70–90 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 30 days for a continuous supply.
Getting the timing right
Sow after the last frost, any time up to about eleven weeks before the first. Because it matures so fast it can follow an early crop and still finish, and it smothers weeds while doing so.
Frost tolerance
Killed outright by the lightest frost, which is exactly why it works as a summer cover crop that clears itself away in autumn.
Classified as tender, with damage expected below 0°C (32°F)32°F (0°C).