Follow the Field 2020 Update #18

Happy Friday! Short update for you today as we await harvest.

September 11, 2020 Update:

Soybeans (142 days)

The soybean pods continue to fill out and the plants themselves are showing signs of turning, or leaves beginning to turn yellow and brown and fall off the plant. This is a natural process as the plant completes its life cycle and winds down production.

See the leaves beginning to change color? This field will look a lot different at this time next week. Lots of things influence when beans will turn – things like temperature can speed up or slow down the process, variety/genetics, when the beans were planted (beans planted earlier in the spring will likely begin to turn before beans planted later in the spring), and other factors.

Soybean pods are still pretty green yet. Most of the leaves will fall off the plants before the pods begin to turn brown and the beans inside mature. We’ve got at least a few weeks before harvest kicks off in this field.

Here’s what the beans inside the pods look like. They’ve completely filled their individual spaces in the pods and are still pretty green yet. As the beans dry down and lose moisture, they’ll change color to a yellow/brown (depends on the variety genetics) and will change shape into more of a sphere. Target moisture for beans is about 13-15%.

Corn (122 days)

The corn is showing lots of signs of drying down, but it’s not quite as obvious from the road as soybeans are (mostly because corn is so tall).

Nearly all of the husks around the ears have turned brown.

And here’s what’s happening inside the husk. This is a really nice ear with 16 kernels around and kernels nearly all the way to the top. If we would’ve experienced less-than-ideal weather (lack of rain or really hot temperatures for many days in a row), the plant may have aborted some of the kernels at the top of the ear in order to focus on the bottom kernels, but we lucked out and had some pretty great weather post-pollination.

The plant’s focus is on reproduction – it wants to produce new seeds for the survival of the species. You may remember back in July when I had some pictures of plants with two or even three ears established on the plant. Corn plants only have one shot at pollination, so the plant set out ears as potential – we didn’t expect the second ear to fill out (and definitely not the third) as the plant will focus on the top primary ear first, which is partly genetics and partly how we plant fields to optimize growth conditions. Within that primary ear, the ear will fill with kernels from top to bottom. We don’t worry about a situation where there might be a bunch of half-filled kernels or anything – the plant focuses on the kernels that it can fill to maturity beginning from bottom to top in the primary ear and then on to the secondary ear and so on.

Here’s a different view of the ear.

Last week, I talked a little about what we look for to determine how mature the kernels are. The photo above is from last week (photo taken 9/3/20). The green line/brown arrow point out the milk line. The photo below is from yesterday (9/10/20). You can see how the milk line has moved a little closer to the center of the ear. This is a signal of progress towards maturity. When the milk line reaches the bottom of the kernel, a black layer will form. The black layer essentially seals the kernel off from the cob. Right now, the plant provides each kernel with the nutrition necessary for development through the cob, and when the kernel forms the black layer, it’s preparing itself for maturity and winter dormancy. If we get a frost after black layer (we were worried about a frost before black layer last year since the season was delayed because of a wet spring), the kernels will be fine since they are now independent from the plant and the death of the plant from frost won’t impact kernel maturity.

After black layer, we’ll have to wait a while before the corn is ready for harvest. Corn has to be 15% moisture for optimal storage, although we can harvest when it has higher moisture (ideally not higher than 22-24%). Then at the elevator, the corn is dried in the big dryer before it goes into storage before it’s taken to where it’ll be used. We have to pay per percentage point that the corn has to be dried. If we wait too long and the corn is too dry, we risk quality issues during harvest and also lose the water weight we can expect with the 15% moisture corn. But that’s something to worry about only if we haven’t been able to get into the field and harvest a few months from now. Likely, we’ll be harvesting around the beginning of October.

And that’s the update for this week. I’m looking forward to seeing the fields get closer and closer to being ready to harvest over the next week and will be back on Friday with another update. Have a great weekend!