Wheat and Rye
Yesterday I went out to take a picture of the wheat blooming, but I was too late! It probably all happened while I was gone. It's not a big showy bloom. In fact, it's so subtle that I didn't even know wheat produced a flower until Roy's mom told me this year!
| So I missed the wheat blooming for one more year, but I did get a picture of rye
blooming. Rye looks similar to wheat, but it's much taller. In a
wheat field rye is a pest. After a farmer harvests wheat and tries to
sell it, he'll get docked for any rye that was harvested along with his
wheat. Roy says that his family has worked very hard to control the rye in their fields. He said I should let him know if I ever see a rye plant among their wheat because they'll go out of their way to pull it. This morning Roy went outside to garden and came in to tell me that our neighbor was wicking the rye in his field. Of course, I had to ask what wicking is and this is what he told me: Roy: "Well you have this thing that's like a big tampon . . ." Susan: "You did not just compare it to a tampon." Roy: "I did. It's this long thing that's soaked in chemical. Because the rye is taller than the wheat you can set this thing up at just the right height that when you drive along it only touches the rye. The chemical gets rubbed onto the rye and kills it without harming the wheat." |  |
So here's a picture of our neighbor wicking the rye.
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