NORTHWESTERN NEGEV
– This is a huge cultivated organic barley field which was Aviv.
- This is a volunteer field of barley, just outside of the organic field, but on the same property. It is the strain of barley we typically see in a volunteer field, as opposed to a cultivated field. We saw a good amount of Aviv in this field, but as it’s a volunteer field, so there we saw all states of development.
- This is a huge volunteer field of barley, in which we found large amounts which were close to being Aviv.
- This is a huge tell (raised mound marking the site of an ancient city) with tons of volunteer barley. We only inspected the West side, because that’s the side which gets the strongest sunlight and therefore is more developed. It had lots of patches of Aviv and Ripe barley, which may be a result of sides of the tell blocking the elements and because it’s a big mountain rainwater falls down. It should be noted that there were also lots of parts on this West side, which were blocked from the good sunlight, and were therefore less developed.
BEIT SHEAN REGION
- This is a huge field with cotton and worm stages. I’m not sure whether the field is still be tended to.
- This is a huge cultivated field, 90% hadn’t finished developing and the heads were still in the boot, the tall ones in which the head had emerged were in the worm and cotton stages (a few anomalies were ripe).
- This field seems to be abandoned. We found a large patch of ripe barley, however the seeds were extremely small. I suspect this patch was under stress and so it ripened quickly before the seeds had a chance to develop. This also explains why the rest of the filed was still in the cotton stage.
JORDAN VALLEY
- This is a huge field on the East side of the highway. It was mostly still baby barley and some in the water stage. We actually stopped at a few other places on this side of the highway. Some had more advanced barley than this field, but we noticed the soil at these locations, including this one, was not optimal because the land had been abandoned for so long, and we aren’t sure whether this may be causing some stalks to develop quicker under the stress and maybe some are underdeveloped due to lack of proper nutrients in the soil.
- Volunteer patches on the West side of the highway. The soil looked much healthier here than it did on the East side. However, it should be noted that this field is on a slope and so it’s possible that rainwater running off from it makes it ripen faster.
JERUSALEM
- This is a large patch of volunteer barley in Northern Jerusalem, which was in the flowering stage.
- This is a nice size patch of volunteer barley in Southern Jerusalem, most of the heads hadn’t emerged yet, and those that had, the seed hadn’t started developing yet.
