Harvest Tales - Saline County 01
Harvest stories submitted by Kansans for the online exhibit, Wheat People.
Submit your own at kshs.kansasmuseum@ks.gov.
Clayton Short
Selecting Wheat Varieties
The rule of thumb is you try to get varieties that have different maturities. . . . That spreads it out just a little bit at harvest . . . [and] problems that occur, like a freeze, aren't going to kill all your wheat. It may hurt the early variety, but it's not going to hurt everything. . . . A lot of times, the lower yielding wheats are tough, and they'll yield lower, but in a bad year they'll be the best wheats around. . . .
I was going to plant Jagger . . . but everybody's planting Jagger. It's going to be on 50% of the acres around here, and when you get wheat that's on that many acres, it makes me nervous because if there's a disease that it's susceptible to, that disease will be able to move throughout the state, just jumping from field to field. . . . I didn't throw it out because it wasn't a good yielder. I got rid of it because it's everywhere.