Wheat is tough. It will work hard to produce a crop even whether dealing with extreme drought conditions like 2011 and 2012 or when covered with snow and ice that prevents the sun from reaching the plant.

The area got a lot of moisture this year and the wheat crop looks good whether it was the earliest planted or some of the last. The last planting is not as far along but it is still just as resilient.

While this is a living plant, it is very tolerant of the cold. While it might seem that snow or ice would harm the plant, it in fact protects it from cold temperatures that can damage the wheat.

"Any time you get that insulation from the cold, it does a world of good," said Mark Ploger, Pratt County Extension Agent.

In fact the snow and ice acts as such a good insulator that that it is more of a help to the later planted wheat that may not have had as much time to develop a big root system like the earlier planted wheat.

The snow and ice that fell in the area recently hit from four to five inches. The wind was not a factor so the snow and ice stayed where it fell and provided an even covering on the wheat fields.Wheat gets its toughness during a "vernalization period" that helps the wheat acclimate to changes in the weather, particularly during the temperature changes in the late fall and early winter, Ploger said.

Kansas will frequently have several days of unusually warm weather followed by unusually cold temperatures for several days.

This is a hardening process that gives it the name hard red winter wheat. This category of wheat is grown from Nebraska to the south.Hard wheat is planted in the fall then goes dormant. It can stand temperatures that get to 10 below zero.

For the colder climates further north, where temperatures get down to 40 to 50 degrees below zero, farmers choose to plant soft wheat in the spring and avoid the extreme cold temperatures.

But in Kansas, hard wheat is the category of choice and all across the state and around Pratt County, the wheat crop is looking good.The ample moisture allowed the wheat to produce a good root system and grow enough to even provide wheat pasture, something that hadn't happened for a couple of years because of the drought.

Source - http://www.pratttribune.com/