What is this??

[Cathpot]

This fellow has popped up in the last couple of weeks. Some sort of grass? Nothing like it in the rest of the garden

How big is it? It looks like oats to me.

Oats.

Bird table nearby? I have all sorts of weird and wonderful crops pop up under mine.

I agree, that's oat

Thank you! I wasn’t thinking of a cereal crop! Not near the bird table ~ just one of those odd things I suppose. I’ll show the kids and leave it to see how it develops.

I had a little crop of wheat appear in my garden one year. About 5 plants in a little bunch, on the far side of the garden from the birdfeeder.

We tried to harvest the wheat and grind it between two flat stones, but did not succeed in making flour. I think we harvested too early because we were going away for two weeks and thought it might be too late when we returned. Still ate it, though. I added the crushed grains to a stew.

Maybe I could aim to make a very tiny flapjack

maybe you could keep it to use as 'reindeer food' safe to scatter outside at Xmas?

(Unlike the bought stuff metro.co.uk/2016/12/23/please-dont-leave-reindeer-food-in-your-garden-this-christmas-6341739/)

Lol at the flapjack
I’m fascinated by what rocks up from bird seed. We’ve had a sunflower shoot (got eaten), flax (beautiful) and Amaranth

So many options!

DD2 watches those YouTube videos of people cooking things in tiny tiny kitchens so she is very much onboard with flapjack idea. Its the niger seeds that germinate under our feeder which is a pain but I love the goldfinches . There is a little group of things germinating under the fat ball feeder as well which could be anything.

I gave up on nijer seed when I found that goldfinches also love husked sunflower seeds, which other birds also love and which doesn't cause much mess or germinate.

By Niger do you mean Nigella?

No, it's this - comes under a multitude of spellings (though apparently not the one I used!)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizotia_abyssinica

Oh I think I’ve seen that seed. So have people had that yellow flower grow from it? I love a surprise plant. Really cheers me up