Follow the Field Update #7 – Keeping It PG-13

Happy Friday! This week seemed to just fly by and it’s already time for another Follow the Field update! Big changes in the fields this week, and I’m going to try to keep it PG-13 for you. 😉

 

8/9/19 UPDATE:

Cover Crop Soybeans (84 Days)

Nothing too exciting happening in this soybean field. In the last week, we applied fungicide to this field. Diseases are a little different than insects in that there really isn’t a threshold before acting. In fact, we have to be more proactive than reactive, because you can’t really reverse the damage of a disease once it’s infected a plant. After researching the weather conditions we’re likely to experience for the rest of the season, taking into account what disease issues we know this field has had before, and evaluating soybean prices, we decided that a fungicide application made financial sense. That was likely the last of any application we’ll make in this field for the rest of the season – now it just needs to focus on making soybeans.

We got 0.3″ of rain on Monday night, which really gave these beans a boost. They grew a few inches in height and have been putting on more pods, which is good! More pods = more soybeans = more yield = happy farmers. As you can see in the photo below, some of these pods even have four beans in them!

 

Corn (66 Days)

The corn’s pretty tall now. Now that it’s tasseled, it’s done growing in height and will now focus growth on the ears, filling each kernel that was pollinated.

See those things that look like rice? Those fell from the tassel up at the top of the stalk and contain pollen for the silks. There’s plenty of pollen in this field – I only walked about 15 yards in and my arms and phone were covered in a fine, yellow dust (pollen).

As you can see, the silks are a yellow-ish white before they’re pollinated. This ear is actually in the process of being pollinated in this photo. See the bits of tassel tangled in the ear? The silks are a little sticky, which helps collect the pollen.

This is an ear on the stalk right next to the stalk in the above photo. I can tell that this ear has been mostly pollinated because the silks are starting to turn brown. Each silk is connected to an individual kernel. We’ll know pollination is complete when the entire bunch of silks turns brown, probably within another day or two.

Have you ever been out near a cornfield around this time of year (well…usually around the middle to end of July), right after corn has tasseled? It definitely has a very distinct smell – almost sweet? It’s similar to what a cornfield smells like right after a good rain. (…well, I’m convinced that corn has a definite scent to it after a good rain anyway.)

I noticed that there were a bunch of corn stalks with multiple ears. You often see this on the outside of a field, where the corn plants are exposed to more sunlight and have slightly less competition for water compared to their counterparts further into the field. These plants were towards the inside of the field and there were a bunch of them all in a row, which is what confused me. I double-checked with my dad, and yes, this is unusual, but the plants will likely abort the second, smaller ear in favor of filling out the first main ear. We’d prefer that the corn plants do this, anyway, because we want one large, filled out ear rather than two partially filled out ears that struggled because resources to fill were split between the two. It’ll be interesting to see what happens as corn genetics are improved for higher yields – will it be common for plants to support two or more ears and do a good job filling all of them out with plump kernels? We’ll see!

 

No-Till Soybeans (62 Days)

These later-planted soybeans are coming right along. They’ve gained a lot of height in the last few weeks and have branched out nicely.

We’re even getting some nice pod fill over here already. See how the soybean pods closer to the bottom are larger than the ones at the top? That part of the plant flowered earlier, so those pods have had a few extra days to develop. As I talked about in the week 3 update, unlike corn, soybeans will continue to grow in height and put on new leaves, even after the reproductive stage has begun. If you look closely towards the top of the plant, you can just make out a few more purple flowers that haven’t yet started developing a pod. This part of the plant didn’t even exist when the bigger pods towards the bottom had been pollinated and began to develop!

We’ll make a decision very soon (like today or tomorrow) as to whether we think it makes sense to apply a fungicide to this field. We have to consider the cost of the fungicide, what price we might get for the soybeans, and what the disease risk is if we don’t apply a fungicide. If soybean prices are trending up, we want to protect the potential yield out here. If they aren’t trending up or are even trending down, we’ll have to look closely at how much the fungicide application will cost and whether it’s worth sacrificing a few bushels in yield loss if a disease problem presents itself in this field before harvest. Farming is a constant game of chance and educated guesses.

 

And there you have it – we talked about the birds and the bees (AKA, corn pollination) while keeping it all PG-13. 🙂 I’ll leave you with a few sunset shots from last night. I didn’t end up getting out to the fields until pretty late – just in the nick of time to grab some pictures for this post before it got too dark, actually. But it was totally worth having to rush a bit since I was treated to a gorgeous sunset.