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| April 17 | |
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The wheat is still making progress. Say, where did our red flags go? It looks like the wheat is finally taller than the flags. It seems like we’ve had fairly warm weather since April 5th, but our temperatures have been slightly below normal for the month (Locally, the temperature dropped below freezing on two occasions.). That’s why the wheat has slowed its progress. It rained Sunday, April 16. We got 0.73 of an inch. It hadn’t rained since April 3rd and with the strong winds we’ve had, the soil surface was drying out. So, this was a needed rain. Because of the freezing temperatures we’ve had the past two weeks, I’ve received some questions from farmers wondering how to identify freeze damage. Click here if you want to see symptoms of freeze damage. |
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I thought we had better put in some new, taller flags, so we can keep track of our area. Do you think the wheat will grow taller than these flags? We’ll have to wait and see! Let’s take a closeup look at the area between the red flags. |
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I couldn’t see our row very well, so I cut part of the row in front. Now, we can see the plants better and you can see one of the old red flags. We are looking for the second node on the stem. We’ll need to pull up some plants to take a closer look. |
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There’s the second node. Look at about the 4 ½ inch mark on the ruler and you can see the node on at least two stems. Not all the stems in our area have the second node visible, but we should be able to see the second node on all the stems by next week. By then we will probably have some stems with three nodes! |
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You can see the second node on this stem just slightly above the 5 inch mark. I measured from the roots so the second node is actually about 4 inches from the soil surface. And the first node, which is at the 1 ½ inch mark, is actually about ½ inch above the soil surface. If you remember last time (April 5th), the first node was 3 inches above the soil. It is not unusual to see a wide range where the first node occurs on different stems. |
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Here’s the growing point or head at the second node. Remember, the head is just above the node. It will continue to move up inside the stem. Do you think this head, which is at the second node is bigger than a head at the first node like we saw on April 5th? Click here if you want to compare a head at the first node with a head at the second node. |
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This growing point or head is above the second node and you can see it is about 15 millimeters long (a little more than ½ inch). I wonder how big it will be when it reaches the third node. |
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