Wheat fields

The Spring Street Marquis field.  The green clumps are mostly Turkey wheat, which will have to be rogued out to keep the seed pure.  I pulled out a few by hand but my plan is to just yank the heads, which should be weeks ahead of the Marquis and very easy to spot in June/July.

The Marquis field, looking towards the road.

The Ehmke Turkey looks clean and strong.  I can't wait to try this stuff in the kitchen!

Indoor seeding

I started the cucurbits inside on May 4.  I am short on zuchini seed but otherwise the usual suspects are in there--heavy on the butternut squash.

I found some more celeriac seed buried in the closet and tried again.  On the advice of a friend I am trying to get the soil warmer, so I have two heating mats underneath and the surface temperature is about 70 degrees now.  We'll see!

Clover Plot

This was the area of a burn pile from last year.  I dug out two crab apple trees and a lot of old buckthorn stumps.  The straw is where the raspberries went in.  I prepared it as best I could and then sprinkled crimson clover into the ground.  I want to learn more about annual clovers, and last year I found it very useful to have a patch of clover to serve as a "bunny magnet" to draw any rabbits that get past the perimeter fence away from my veggies.

There are a few more weeds than I expected coming up in the East strip.  Well, this is what a wet Spring gives you.  Not enough time to work the soil and clean up the weeds.  The wheel hoe is just indispensable for dealing with this.  The new model with a 7" cultivator sweep is working fantastic.  Once the cash crop is up some more and the place dries up I will really go to town here.

Turned out that a lot of my celeriac was actually lamb's quarters!  I ordered some more seed, which will be late getting in the ground now.  Target for indoor starting of celeriac is March 15 around here.

Cold Spring Update

May is almost here and there is a little, but a not much more, to show for it.  A few veggies are poking out of the ground, and all of the onions and leeks have been planted at the far East end.  Weirdly, forecasted rain kind of backed off and for a moment I was worried the onions would dry up and start dying.  But the past two days have added about 3/8" of rain to the field, just about perfect.

The donks are grazing on the wheat and clover cover crops.  They seem to prefer the wheat.  This will get plowed up as soon as it is dry enough.  I started to plow the clover but it was too wet to plow very well.

The winter wheat historical tests, samples from the USDA small grains collection.  From left to right, Turkey Red, Wisconsin No. 2, and Bacska.

USDA Spring wheat samples.  From left to right, Sturgeon, Marquis, and Red Fife.  Wish I had ordered some bluestem!

Garlic looks fantastic!  The over-wintered onion experiment was a complete failure, I don't think a single plants survived.  Also, the sets died.  However, all over there were onions that I forgot to harvest last year that survived just fine, and also a bunch of spring onions that self-seeded themselves all over.  Many of these volunteers I dug up and put in with the garlic.

Here is the Marquis just coming up in the garden.  

Here are the "Three Turkeys," KC-State (Ehmke), Heartland, and Stephens.  The Stephens is noticeably taller and more variable.

Planting Spuds and Veggies

April 18, one of the first passes over the 2015 vegetable area that will be seeded to Spring grains.

Another view of the East strip, planted to vegetables on the 18th.

My seed potato was pretty far gone but I think it will be OK.  My furrows are pretty shallow and I think that helps in my cold wet soil.

Furrow opened up with the 6" plow, ready for seed potato.

A view of the East strip.  You can see the allium row (leeks and onions).  Further over is spinach, snap peas, bok choi, beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, brussel sprouts, brocolli, and lettuce.  This ground was newly opened in 2015, but it looks pretty good.

Here are the two rows of potatoes after being covered up.  This strip of oats and peas from last year does not look as good as I had hoped.  There were a lot of weeds and some sod to dig up, and it frankly could use more time.  But since potatoes get hilled so many times it is easier to manage weed pressure.  This ground will get some corn in a month, and that will buy me some tillage time.

Spring Street Marquis

Ron and Mary put the 2 acres of Marquis on Spring Street to bed this morning.  Ron disced the field and then worked it again with his cultimulcher.  The following day the Marquis was drilled in at 120 lbs/acre (notch 20 on both sides), and medium red clover was put in the grass box at about 7 lbs/acre (notch 2 on the grass box).  There was just barely enough seed to cover the field (I started out with just 4 very precious bushels, and removed quantities for testing on my homestead as well as donating a sample to UW-Madison for their bread wheat test this year.  In fact, I still have not baked with this legendary wheat yet.  I will have to wait until August!  As usual Ron took his spike tooth and worked the field once after drilling.

Note: Ron vacuumed out the remaining clover seed so I was able to weigh what was left in the 50 lb bag we started with.  A total of 11 pounds of clover seed was put on the field, so the seeding rate was 5.5 lbs/acre.  So the setting on the grass box could have been opened up a bit.

"Attention was first attracted to Marquis wheat in the United States through its having won premiums at several expositions.  Seed was introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1912 and 1913 and the variety was thoroughly tested at numerous experiment stations in the spring wheat sections.  These and other experiments reported by Ball and Clark 40 41 proved the variety to be widely adapted.  In the meantime, in consequence of much publicity, a strong demand for seed arose. A considerable quantity was brought into the country for sowing in 1913. Much larger quantities were imported in 1914. The importations of these two years, with the seed home grown in 1913, were sufficient to sow about half a million acres in 1914.  Most of the imported seed was sold in Minnesota North Dakota and Montana.  Smaller quantities were sold in other spring wheat States. In this way the Marquis variety became widely distributed in a very short time. In 1919, only seven years after its introduction, it made up at least 60 per cent, or nearly 12,000,000 acres, of the total spring wheat acreage of the United States."  --Classification of American Wheat Varieties

The field on day 1 after 2 passes with the dis.

Historic Spring Wheat Testing

April 18 was the first day it was possible to get in the field this year.  Naturally, rain is in the forecast so there is no time to waste!  I had more historic wheat to test, plus some other grains to mess with.  

From the USDA small grains collection, I had packets of Marquis, Red Fife, and Sturgeon.  Sturgeon is a UW-Extension selection of Marquis from the 1930's.  Surrounding this I drilled in 4 rows of Marquis, 2 rows of Red Fife (the smelly, damaged stuff from Appleton), 2 rows of Kamut/Khorasian wheat, 2 rows of Barley, and a good spread of naked oats.  I basically covered the mixed vegetable ground from last year with wheat, oats, and barley.

In the new strip on the East end (was buckwheat, then oats & peas), I put in mixed vegetables in full and half rows.   Spinach, peas, bok choi, beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, brussel sprouts, brocolli, and lettuce I think.  Tomorrow I hope to get some leeks and potatoes planted, before it starts raining in the afternoon.