Per my pea post.. we are getting 7 days straight of rain and temps in the mid to high nineties and my barley and rye are in varying stages of maturity from milk to hard dough. Some are already showing signs of mold at the hard dough stage and this is my first year growing so I’d like to keep enough diversity for further outcrossing and have enough to plant a larger patch.
My question is at what stage can I harvest early to dry indoors and still keep a good germ rate?
Hi Michael, I don’t know for sure, but you should get germination at hard dough stage. Milk might be too early.
I get various types of molds on most of my wheats in North Florida. Interestingly, genetics plays a large role in susceptibility. I typically do not have much rain in late April-May when I harvest, but our humidity can be high and our temps are in the high 80s or mid 90s. If you are growing the GTS Mix, quite a bit in that is susceptible to mold issues. I know because I grew much of what went into it. The variety I have found to be most resistant to head and kernel molds is Brazilian Lavras.
In my experience, barley is more resistant to kernel molds than wheat and is earlier to mature.
Two things I suggest:
It took me three years to get things right in my conditions to get a sizeable harvest that I could eat. From dealing with getting planting dates right to avoid bad weather during harvests to fighting rats mulching the maturing heads, it has been a big learning curve. I hope you keep at it.
Based on wheat:
If there’s visible green: it won’t be viable. It also won’t deteriorate in the rain (as my dad always said, the best thing that could happen the first day the wheat looks ripe at 60 mph is for it to rain and keep combines out of the field for a week).
If no visible green, it will dry.
At 7:32 you can apparently also heat dry them?
