Our
field continues to develop and it is starting to turn a reddish
color. We’ve had some great wheat weather this past week. It
wasn’t too hot and we had about 1 ½ inches of rain. The wheat
really likes that.
Plants
in the row still appear healthy. You can tell the wind is blowing
today by the way the heads are leaning. I think we should look at
the flag leaf of a plant or two to see if everything is okay.
Uh
oh! We’ve got some orange spots on the flag leaf. That’s leaf
rust and we don’t like that. Fortunately, our wheat has
developed enough that the rust will cause little or no damage. If
the leaf rust had developed a couple weeks ago our grain yields
would have been reduced. I predict by next Friday most of our flag
leaves will be gone!
Now,
that’s a wheat head! Just look at the number of kernels in some
spikelets. There are a few spikelets with four kernels in them. Do
you see them (look at the middle of the head)?
With
the cooler-than-normal weather we've had lately our wheat has
slowed its development. This kernel is about 22 to 23 days old and
is still in the dough stage (Feekes stage 11.2). I thought the
kernels should be changing colors by now. Last
year at this time the kernels had their mature color.
