PASCO, Wash. — The waves of flowers in Kevin Heinen’s Appar blue flax field today are not the same that were there yesterday.

They won’t be the same tomorrow, either.

“It’s what we call an indeterminate plant,” Heinen said of the flax. “The flowers you see that morning fall off that day, and a new set of flowers come the next day.”

To an unsuspecting driver passing by on Highway 395 north of Pasco, Wash., the field resembles a lake.

Heinen rents the field, and said the landlord gets a lot of calls asking what the eye-catching crop is.

Heinen’s Lucky H Farms grows 80 acres of the blue flower.

The seed is processed at Great Basin Seed Inc. in Mesa, Wash., and North Basin Seed Inc. in Odessa, Wash.

Heinen has raised blue flax seed and other forbs and native grasses since the late 1990s.

The Bureau of Land Management and other federal or state agencies use the seed for conservation programs or to restore rangeland after a wildfire.

Flax is also used in a lot of mining and roadside mitigation projects, said RJ Schmitt, a partner at Landmark Turf & Native Seed in Spokane. It also attracts pollinators.

The Columbia Basin is one of the best seed production regions in the world because irrigation is available and it has hot, dry summers, Schmitt said.

“All of these are somewhat niche crops — there’s maybe 100,000 pounds of this kind of stuff produced across the world, and probably 90% of that’s done in the Columbia Basin,” Schmitt said.

As the plant matures and buds dry, Heinen picks the day he can harvest the most seed. He swaths it like grass seed and combines it.

One challenge is only a few chemicals are available to ward off diseases, weeds and insects, Heinen said.

Demand varies from year to year, Schmitt said. He doesn’t recommend farmers raise the crops with the idea of selling the seeds on their own.

“That field is maybe fairly lucrative this year, but you (try to) predict what government’s going to do,” he said. “I’ve seen the price range from ‘I can’t even give it away’ to maybe $10 a pound.”

Growers should know what they’re getting into before they try, he said.

“We speculate on what we hope government is going to buy, they give us some indication, but it’s not always very reliable,” he said. “They too would love to predict the acres that are going to burn this summer. They would love to know that beforehand.”

Heinen plans to continue to raise the crops.

“The native grasses and forbs, I’ve always enjoyed the challenge,” he said.