Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Wheat has Grown Heads!

On July First we were looking at the field when we got a surprise: THE WHEAT HAS HEADS!!! Some of our wheat started to look like the wheat you might see on a calendar of the Canadian Prairies.
Field Inspection on July First (Canada Day)
Look- it has a head! (Really a "Spikelet")
The heads of wheat are actually called "spikelets". We found this out when we phoned Uncle Paul to tell him about the wheat. Since "spikelet" is a bit weird sounding to us we're just going to call them heads for now. The heads appeared on day 37 after emergence. This seems early measuring against the Feekes Scale, but maybe this kind of wheat just grows faster. We took a few more photos, just for fun:
Three Heads are better than one!

I wonder how this will taste?
The head seems to split the stalk and pop out.

The Flag Leaf ends up off to the side.
Since the wheat is taller now and the heads are so neat to see we decided to take down the bunny fence. The bunnies usually eat smaller things that are closer to the ground so the wheat should be ok now. We are wondering when it will change colour to a golden yellow, and how much taller it will get over the next month or two.
Taking down the bunny fence.
The fence seemed longer stretched out in one line!
Weeding and filling the post holes.

Finding weeds in the middle rows.
...and weeding the edges too!
 So far it seems like the wheat is growing well. In a few days it looks like all of the wheat will have heads, and then it just has to keep growing. We will have to figure out how to tell when to harvest it, but we have time before then. It really is amazing to think about how much goes into making a loaf of bread...we are still just getting started!
Ta Daa! Look! A baby wheat field in our back yard!
Now we weed, wait, and watch. Seeing the fireworks on Canada Day was pretty awesome, but seeing the heads on our wheat was even more awesome! It really doesn't look like long grass any more, we really do have a little wheat field in our back yard.

And that is all we know so far.

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