Thunder Acres Organic Winter Rye Seeds, Non-GMO (1 lb)

I planted this in a new flower bed that would have sat empty over winter. It filled in very well and prevented weeds. I plan to cut it off and leave it lay for mulch and plant new perennials right through it this spring.

Update: increased to 5 stars. At the end of the day, it did sprout well and my sprouted and then fermented rye turned out really good. The broken pieces did not affect anything. Will be buying it again, just bigger package. Sprouted well. Gave 4 stars because there is quite a few broken pieces of grains in the mix. I would say maybe 1-2% was broken pieces. It is OK if you just buying it for planting. In my case, I bought it to make some sprouted rye malt. Which means I sprouted seeds and then have to dry it and grind. So I ended up with some unsprouted soaked pieces being milled. Not the end of the world, but next time I might look somewhere else to buy this grain.

I mix these seeds with others seeds to use for my cat. They take about a week to grow and last about a month.

Maybe only 5% of the seeds I put down started growing, it was highly disappointing and useless as a cover-crop due to bad growth Update: This seller’s customer service representative reached out to me and offered a full refund on my purchase. It was very kind of them :)

Grew very well as a cover crop for my garden beds. Getting more for this year.

I haven't had a lot of luck getting this rye to germinate. I planted it alongside some winter wheat; the wheat came up very well, but the rye: not so much -- very thin compared to the wheat. I tried 3 different plantings (maybe it was too warm the first time) but none of them did very well. On the plus side, I ground some of it into flour and made whole-rye bread with it -- that turned out very well. (Heavy and dense, as I expected, but good flavor). So this is good stuff if you plan to eat it, but not so good if you want to plant it.

I bought these seeds for a cover crop for my raised bed plot in our community garden. They had good germination, but verify your coverage as the package barely covered my space, which I think is about 8'x18', I had a nice thick covering that we cut back a couple of times early in the spring and left the clippings to enrich the soil. It was pretty easy to cut it back tight to the ground and rake out the surface roots in the spring to make planting easier. Did a great job of blocking out weeds so spring prep was much easier than years when I didn't plant a cover crop and I think as a result I didn't have many weeds during the growing season. My plot was very productive this summer so I beleive it was a positive for my soil.

I am not sure how to assess seeds as I am not a beginner. The seeds that I have scattered and planted have terminated in a reasonable quantity. The plant appears to be rye, although it's hard to tell with a seedling. Unless I discover that the plant is not winter rye, this package is everything I wanted and needed.