It feels like summer has arrived. Warm weather has really helped the corn and soybeans out in the field. Believe it or not, as of Wednesday we were feeling like we needed another shot of rain and it seems like we got that yesterday evening. This rain will help the corn, some of which hasn’t emerged quite yet (mostly in patches, not an entire field). If that corn doesn’t emerge in the next few days, it’ll be time to get the planter out again and do some replanting to fill in the bare patches.
In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the dry stretch of weather we’re supposed to have over the weekend and next week.
May 29, 2020 Update:
Soybeans (37 Days)
Aww, these beans are getting so big! Actually, they have a long way to go (they’re only about 3 inches tall in this photo – forgot to include the ruler in the image), but they look really good!
I would evaluate this field as being in the V1 growth stage. Soybean progress is measured by V# and R# growth stages. V stands for vegetative and R stands for reproductive. Right around the summer solstice is when soybeans will transition to the reproductive stages. But for now, they’re working on their vegetative growth, or building the plant and providing spots for future flowers and future soybean pods.
The number on the V stage, in this case 1, indicates how many trifoliates are on the soybean plant. Soybeans add leaves in threes, except for the first couple of leaves which are in sets of two. You can kind of see the beginning of a trifoliate in the photo below. For every layer of trifoliates, it advances a growth stage. The earlier growth stages that these soybeans have already graduated from are the VE (emergence) and VC (cotyledon) growth stages. VC is the very first set of leaves the soybean plant has, and is a set of two leaves. You can also see in the below photo that soybeans in this field are working on a new set of trifoliate leaves – once those unfurl, the field will advance to the V2 growth stage.
And here’s some more pictures of what the field looks like right now. You can see that the soybeans are still very small, but they will grow quickly with this week’s nice, brief rains and the heat and humidity.
You can see in the following photo that the cover crop has completely died at this point. We’ll still be keeping an eye on this field to make sure we don’t have an armyworm problem, which can easily harm soybeans this small.
Corn (16 Days)
This corn was planted a few weeks after the soybeans, so naturally a little behind the soybeans in terms of progress.
Corn growth is also measured by growth stages, again using the Vs and Rs. This corn is still in the VE (emergence) stage. The next stage will be V1, after it adds a node (or leaf collar) and adds a new leaf layer to the plant. As a grass plant, corn adds one leaf at a time and the leaves alternate on either side of the plant.
It’s kind of hard to tell that this field is doing anything without walking into it. You can kind of see a greenish tinge on the horizon, which is thousands of corn plants emerging and beginning to grow.
And that’s this week’s update. Back next week, hopefully with photos of growing corn and soybean plants!
No Comments