Happy Friday! The fields are beginning to come to life for the season, albeit slowly. The cool weather we’ve had over the last couple of weeks has really slowed down germination. The good news is that we have warmer weather coming to us in the 10-day forecast…with a chance of rain every day for the next week. Hopefully the heat kicks everything into growth mode and we get off on the right foot this year.
May 14, 2021 Update:
Soybeans (21 days)
The soybeans handle the cool weather a little better than corn, and have tripled in height since last week. Most of the field is emerged, but some areas where we might have a little more compaction are struggling to break the surface. The upcoming rain should help soften the soil surface enough for the seedlings to break through the crust. But for the most part, this field is doing well.
As you might recall from last week’s update, this cereal rye cover crop we have in the soybean field was terminated late last week. You can see that the cover crop is much less green than before. We expect that it will stay standing as it dies, helping to keep weeds at bay. The soybeans will not be bothered by this and will continue to grow, eventually getting taller than the cover crop.
Here’s a ground-level view. You can see that there’s still plenty of corn residue left from last harvest. This will continue to break down over the summer, releasing nutrients remaining from the corn plants back into the soil. The cover crop will do the same thing.
And here’s a better shot of what the soybeans look like. This field looks to be entering the VC stage, which is the growth stage after emergence. The two leaves to the left and right of each stem in this photo are the cotyledons. This is what the seedling developed while still underground. The new leaves beginning to unfurl at the top of the stem are the unifoliate leaves. Soybeans grow leaves in sets of three, and this will be the only set of two. These are the leaves that will kick start photosynthesis for the plant and the seedling will begin supplying its own energy to grow – up until now, it had been supported by the energy and nutrients contained within the seed. (Throwback to high school biology, anyone?)
Corn (17 days)
The corn has emerged this past week, but the field is by no means even. Corn really needs the heat for a good, consistent emergence. An even emergence in corn is more important than in soybeans because of how corn reaches it’s reproductive stages. We talked a bit about this last week, but corn reproduction is basically on a set schedule that starts from the time the corn plant emerges from the soil while beans depend on day length no matter how big or small the plant is. We want the field of corn to reach the reproductive stages at approximately the same time so that all of the future kernels are pollinated. Warmer weather this week should get the rest of the corn up and out of the ground.
Unless you look really closely, you can’t tell that much of anything is growing in this field quite yet. That should be a different story by next week as the corn gets bigger.
And the ground-level view.
As a species of grass, corn always grows in a “whorl”. It’s easiest to see before corn gets taller than the average human. Nature has some pretty cool patterns if you know what to look out for. 🙂
And that’s all for this week’s update. See you next week!
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