Spring has just barely arrived here in the Maritime Pacific Northwest of the USA. The second La Niña year in a row has been playing havoc with our usual weather patterns, and as a result, we are about 7° F below normal. That might not seem like much, but plants and humans are definitely feeling the cold spring.
We are just starting to plant spring wheats and we sorted a few varieties to get the spring season wheats ready for planting. This is my first time planting wheat and handling the seed. There are so many different varieties and configurations. They are all beautiful.
These are just a few selections from the many wheat varieties in the Orcas Island Seed Bank. After we laid the wheats out Dan, the resident biologist, inspected each seed variety, setting aside some that were not spring wheats, and sorted out the ones we would grow.
From there, we threshed and winnowed the wheat seed by hand and put them in labeled coin envelopes to be planted. A few days later we planted them in one of the beds we had prepared earlier.
Here they are all planted in their labeled sections. The ground has been firmly pressed around the seeds and a floating row cover was placed over them to discourage the birds from eating the wheat seed.
