Tuesday 29 July 2008

The Wheat Harvest

The last three weeks has also seen my wheat being harvested and it’s been a very poor crop. The wheat itself is excellent but there wasn’t much of it. I’d not sprayed the field with herbicides and relied on turning the soil and also used an organic fertiliser. My yield is about a fifth to a seventh what I think it should have been with a high level of other matter in it. There was a very high germination of last years sunflower crop, helped by the mild weather earlier this year resulting in the field being generally yellow rather than golden at harvest time and as can be seen from the photograph the wheat was quite sparse and stunted. I’m wondering if the winter and spring deluges washed the fertiliser from the field before it had time to do its job.

So I now need to think very carefully about what to grow next and whether I can afford to keep with the organic/permaculture idea or whether I will have to grow the cereal conventionally as I will be making a loss on this harvest, the question is how big a loss.

2 comments:

aims said...

Oh shoot huh Deborah? I suppose it's even worse than that...and now no rain. Before it was too much rain...all the usual cries of a farmer.

Hope you got a chance to look at that link I posted for you. It sure was cute!

Enjoy your son and hopefully resolve the water issue.

Breezy said...

I'm crushed when something goes wrong with my veggies so a whole field of wheat? You poor thing. I firmly believe the organic/permaculture route is the right one and I hope you'll persevere but I don't have to stand the cost or the heartache