The wheat has come up! I was nervous for a while that it wasn’t going to do anything. I was like a mother hen checking for her babies. Each time I passed the garden, which is a fair amount of times a day, I would inspect for signs of growth. Nothing. Then on Wednesday of last week I could see the first tiny shoots. Then on Thursday it looked like this:
How exciting! Then on Sunday:
(I can see from this photo that there is a rogue borage seedling in there. I will be tackling that later. If I don’t get it quick I start to feel bad about uprooting it as the bees love it so much. I must be ruthless! )
Once the wheat starts you can almost hear and watch it growing. Here it is this morning:
I am a complete amateur so I have no idea how healthy this patch looks with an experienced eye. I wonder if by broadcasting the seed I have grown them too closely together? Will the wheat tiller* if it is spring grown? Or is tillering a feature of winter wheat only? Is it too close for tillering?
I am just very happy to see it come up and grow, especially as whilst the Collie Disruption Mechanism (the poles and string) are working and stopping the dog from digging it isn’t stopping the cats from enjoying the occasional roll on the cool soil or indeed having a scratch about.
*tillering in wheat is when it grows more side shoots (I have seen it mentioned by wheat experts on twitter and I have googled it. Thanks must go to Mark Lea @GreenAcres_Farm and Edward Dickin @naked_barley from whom I am learning vicariously via the magic of Twitter).
