Wheat Watch: Season 4 - Planting and The Trigo Tango

This season we were able to plant our wheat into moisture!  Which is a welcome change from the last few years.  After planting about half of our acres we actually had too much rain.  I know, I know, make up your mind you grumpy farmer.

The rain that did the most damage came very hard and fast and it washed out a lot of our wheat and created standing water lagoons that drowned our wheat seed in some places.  On a positive note, my dog Brisket was happy to help me set my drill and test plant with me. 

Another thing that affected our wheat planting season was it rained right after we planted and then it got really hot for a couple of days.  This caused the top couple of inches of soil to form a hard crust.  The crust stops the coleoptile from breaking through the soil and kills the plant before it can reach the surface.  The coleoptile is a spear like growth that comes out of the wheat seed that allows the wheat to break through the soil.  When seed companies develop new types of wheat a long coleoptile length is a trait that is sought after.

You can see below where we had a hard rain after planting.  It caused a crust to form and it affected the amount of plants that came through the soil.  Farmers call this plant population and look "the stand" of a field.  You can see that below is a poor stand... (Sad trombone sound).  A better stand would be the bottom picture.

After having these rains we had to replant some wheat.  I started to call this little dance the Trigo Tango. We plant, it rains, we replant, it rains.  1, 2, 3... 1, 2, 3... 

 
-Trigo Tangoer Ryan