A Blog Post So Incredible It Took Three(3) Months to Finish.

Apparently I have an enemy who has access to jointed goatgrass (Aegilops cylindrica) seed, cause I had plenty on the eastern edge of my wheat field at the Gray Havens.
This is the kind of stuff that gets seed lots rejected, so I don't want any to wind up in my combine, and I want to prevent as much goatgrass seed from being produced as I can.

This plant has yet to pollinate, so I would be able to prevent any viable seed by spraying it with glyphosate(Roundup).

This plant, however, is at about 50% anthesis, meaning that about 1/2 of the seeds have already pollinated.
This means that I can't prevent viable seeds by spraying glyphosate (as glyphosate is a relatively slow acting chemical.) The only options I have left then, are to either spray with paraquat (Gramaxone, which kills things in a manner of hours) or to mow. This should prevent about 80% more of the seeds than spraying with glyphosate would.
Since the last thing I am going to do (quite possibly literally) is use paraquat in a hand sprayer, the only option left was to mow.

Mowing has the added benefit of cutting of any heads off below what i would cut with the combine (assuming nothing bad were to happen to the wheat before harvest.)

Of course, to do a good job I had to take out some wheat too. I also will leave another foot or two on the edge when I cut it (this is how badly I want to avoid any goatgrass seed contaminating my combine.)

Why is goatgrass so bad, you ask? Well it is a very close relative of wheat, so it can't be controlled in most wheat varieties chemically (the exception being "clearfield wheat varieties with a genetic tolerance to certain herbicides.)
Also, it will actually cross with wheat to create a wheat jointgrass hybrid. What does that look like? Well, as you can see from my neighbors field, pretty mush exactly what you think it would look like:


It looks like this is a problem I will have to deal with every year at the Gray Havens, judging from the healthy Jointed Goatgrass population in the ditch across the road: