Saturday, July 8, 2017

harvesting pacific blue stem and hard red spring wheat

even though the winter wheat failed, the spring wheat that came up survived and thrived...i took a look at it this morning and decided it was time to act before the birds do...the small stand of volunteer pacific blue stem wheat is done ( first and second photos ) so i have harvested what there was of it which constituted enough for only a very small sheaf ( third )...the purposely planted hard red spring wheat in the stand along the south end of the yard ( fourth ) is finished as well ( fifth ) so i brought that in and collected a larger sheaf ( sixth )...i planed an even larger stand along the east side ( seventh ) and that produced the largest sheaf of all ( eighth ) so the entire crop of hard red produced two sheaves ( ninth ) which will yields several hundred ears of wheat and viable seed for next season...different as they are alike the tenth photo is of an ear of pacific blue stem ear on the right and a hard red spring wheat ear on the left...the blue stem usually produces a larger ear with more grain a9 eleventh with the blue stem on the right again ) and that may mean a larger stand next season of deliberate wheat...the rest of the grain is not ready..there is still alot of green left in the rye ( twelfth ) and the syrian dwarf ( thirteenth ) and the emmer ( fourteenth ) are just beginning to ripen...clearly the emmer wheat has much smaller ears than any of the other varieties...another morphological clue to is place as the oldest wheat variety in the yard...more recent ones have been selected for larger ears and grain with much less difficult husks to thresh and winnow...that adventure is next on the list i am accepting applications from volunteers...espcially with the emmer.

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