Buckwheat pillows

Buckwheat hulls are popular as a pillow filling. The empty hulls are loose and they shift around inside the pillow covering. This malleability is good for people with neck or shoulder problems helped by having the head cradled.

Buckwheat bed pillows on auction sites are typically priced at $20 to $30, and up and depending on size and whether the hulls are certified organic.

Some of the other health benefits attributed to buckwheat pillows have been researched and the jury is still out. In particular, the idea that a buckwheat hull pillow will have fewer dust mites may not be true. While the hulls themselves are inert and not attractive to the mites, the filling could have dust or bits of plant matter mixed in. The person who wrote one critical article I read does sell other products so maybe their view should be balanced with pro-buckwheat articles. Also, the results in this study used pillows that had been around a while and one advantage to buckwheat pillows is that they could be re-filled with fresh hulls. A writer who talked about his family's personal experiences with dust mite allergies in the New York Times said that dust mites only bother people who are allergic to the mites, and that putting an ordinary pillow in the dryer on the Hot setting for ten minutes once a week combats the problem. (And if you think my foam pillow is not in the Speed Queen right now, well you are wrong.)

Buckwheat hulls do fit into the "reduce reuse recycle" idea. The hulls have to be removed from every seed before it's ready to be included in toasted groats or buckwheat flour.  That's a lot of hulls, and while they are good as mulch or compost, it makes sense to find other uses for them.

Thrifty, crafty people get busy, as I can see from a quick Google search, and they make their own buckwheat pillows in the shape and size they want.  Here's one simple set of directions.

But have you seen the costs for buckwheat hull filling material? Whoa. the Earth-friendly + organic + healthy thing surcharge is pretty darn high.The labeling of buckwheat as healthy and eco-friendly (and it is) comes at a price. . .to the consumer. Buckwheat hulls are, after all, a waste product.  One could almost argue that mills should pay us to take them away.And so, probably, the typical mill does. And if someone has to pay for the vehicle to haul away the hulls, and a space to process them in, and they sort and clean the accumulated seed and package it up and ship it to customers, then all right. I don't expect to get straw for my garden for free, along that same line of thought about labor, storage, and transport.

I hope, when people are shopping for buckwheat hulls, that they do a little looking-around and price comparison. If having organic hulls is essential, the price is going to be higher than if any hull is a good hull to you. Just scrolling down the first 30 or 40 listings on eBay, I noted that ten pounds of buckwheat hull in a ziplock bag is going for fifty bucks or more. It takes about five pounds to fill an average pillow, so that's $25 a pillow just for the filling. The shipping's free but still. . .

A company called LA Linen does sell the hulls by the pound, which seems best, especially if you have a smaller project in mind, or you want to add more hulls to a pillow you've already got.

Of  course, being me, I say grow your own buckwheat and use the unhulled seeds right off the plants. You can be as organic as you like, you're "buying" local, no shipping truck to pollute the air, and the price is right. Find out more on the Buckwheat in the home garden on this site.