Buckwheat · Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
When to plant buckwheat in Freiburg
Main outdoor window
7-21 May
The window this page is built around.
Timed from last spring frost
30 April
In Freiburg, on your chosen risk.
Ready to pick
16 Jul - 5 Aug
If you plant at the start of the window.
The average last frost. Half of all years are later than this.
Step by step in Freiburg
Each window is a range, not a single day. Earlier in the range buys you a longer season; later in it buys you a safer one.
Sow direct
7-21 May
One week after your last frost.
Harvest
16 Jul - 5 Aug
Buckwheat through the year
Against the frost risk in Freiburg
Why these dates
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.
Killed outright by the lightest frost, which is exactly why it works as a summer cover crop that clears itself away in autumn.
Seed packets and extension guides express timing as weeks either side of the last spring frost, because that is the only reference point that travels. Buckwheat are timed for direct sowing 1 weeks after it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Freiburg.
The median frost-free season here is 173 days, against 70 to 90 days to maturity for this crop counted from sowing. That margin is what decides whether a late sowing is worth attempting.
Also in Freiburg
Other grains to time
Growing buckwheat in Freiburg
When should I plant buckwheat in Freiburg?
Aim for 7-21 May in an average year. If you would rather not gamble on the weather, wait until 20 May - 3 Jun - by then frost has finished in nine years out of ten.
When will buckwheat be ready to harvest in Freiburg?
Expect to start picking around 16 Jul - 5 Aug, based on 70 to 90 days to maturity from the planting date calculated for this location.
How much frost will buckwheat tolerate?
Killed outright by the lightest frost, which is exactly why it works as a summer cover crop that clears itself away in autumn.