Follow the Field Update #5 – Summer Marches On

 

Happy Friday! I can’t believe how much it cooled off this week compared to the 100+ degree heat index we had last week. I was able to finally turn the air conditioner off and open up some windows, which is a huge relief since I cringe at the sight of my electric bill during the summer months. The cats love laying in the open windows, so win-win for all of us in my household. 🙂

7/26/19 Update:

Cover Crop Soybeans (70 Days)

The soybeans are steadily growing in height and branching out with new leaves. But beneath the surface of the soybean field, more flowers are blooming and pods are beginning to form.

Two things to look at in the photo above. See the pods with the brown, dried flowers at the tips? These are less than 1/2 inch in length at the moment, but will grow to carry two to four soybeans inside, which is what we’ll harvest this fall. More pods + more soybeans in each pod = higher yields. The second thing to look at is the ground cover. In full tillage field, you’d see black soil underneath the canopy. In a no-till field, you’d see soil plus a few cornstalks and whatever other plant residue is left from last fall. In this field, corn residue from last fall plus what’s left from the cereal rye cover crop cover nearly every square inch of ground that’s left. It’s like a double-whammy when it comes to suppressing weeds!

Also, check out this colorful, cloudy sunset from last night. I love the pink hues!

 

Corn (52 Days)

If you look closely at the bottom center photo, you can see a small section of the top of the yardstick. The corn has grown well over my head and it would take a measuring tape and a ladder to show the actual height.

Right now, we’re waiting for the corn to tassel. The corn plant will complete its vegetative growth and stop adding leaves once it tassels. At the same time, the corn plant is working on developing the ear, which is our future harvest. When it comes time to tassel, the ear will be ready with silks to catch the pollen from the tassel. Think of the tassel as the male and the silks/ear as a female – the pollen from the tassel will pollinate the silks, which each lead to an individual kernel in the future ear of corn. Once the silk is pollinated, kernel development begins.

Sometimes you hear of detasseling corn. This is a normal practice in corn seed production. Most corn plants we use today are bred through a process called hybridization. Corn hybrids are developed from two parent plants with good genetics. The intention is that the hybrid child that results from breeding these two parent plants together has the superior genes from each parent plant, so things like native tolerance to pests and diseases or good stalk density so that the wind doesn’t blow the plant over or good genetics for yield. The purpose of detasseling is to ensure that the male parts (tassel) of the “father” corn plant pollinate the female parts (the silks) of the “mother” corn plant. We want the plants to cross and not self-pollinate, otherwise, we wouldn’t have the hybrid with the superior genetics from both parents. That’s why some rows (the female rows) in a seed corn field are detasseled, but one row (the male row) from every 4-5 rows remains in the field during pollination. After pollination, the male rows are removed and only the ears from the female rows will be harvested.

Farmers have been planting corn hybrids for more than 100 years. We don’t grow any seed corn on our farm, but we do buy seed corn every year because corn hybrids don’t reproduce well. I don’t mean that they don’t produce a lot of seeds – also known as high yields in the cash crop world 🙂 – but more like the second generation wouldn’t grow and yield very well. If we planted the kernels from an ear of corn harvested this fall, the new corn plants wouldn’t have the same superior traits as the parent plant. It would still produce, but yields probably wouldn’t be nearly as good as the first-generation hybrid corn. We often refer to this as “hybrid vigor.”

Anyway, we still have several leaves to go before we start seeing the tassels pop up in this field. I looked at corn plants on the outside of the field and then several rows in to see if I could find any tassels ready to pop out. There weren’t any inside the field, but there were a few starting to develop on the outside rows. The corn plants on the outside rows tend to grow faster because they have less competition for nutrients and sunlight than the plants with neighboring plants on all sides. Take a look at the tassel that was developing inside a roll of three yet-to-unfurl leaves in the photo to the right. There’s also a tiny ear starting to develop further down the stalk, which you can see in the second photo.

Normally, corn has pollinated or is pollinating at this time of year. Because planting was delayed until June, the corn is a bit behind, which means corn harvest will be a little later than usual.

 

No-Till Soybeans (48 Days)

Wow, check out how much these beans have grown since last week! They’ve put on about three to four inches in height and have really filled out between the rows. These soybeans are about three weeks behind the soybeans I talked about earlier in this post, so they’re shorter, but working on flowering and developing pods. As I mentioned in Follow the Field Update #3, soybeans are different than corn plants in that they begin their reproductive stages based on the length of days and nights, not necessarily by how tall they are or how many leaves they have. So like the soybeans that were planted three weeks earlier, these soybeans began to flower about a week or two ago. They did flower a few days later than the other field, so they haven’t quite started to develop pods, they’re getting close to that stage.

When I was out taking pictures for this post, I noticed that soybean plants in this field had two different colors of flowers – purple and white. There’s no major difference in the visual appearance of these plants besides the flower color, but that tells me that this could either be a different variety or a variation of the same variety. Because the white flowers were in the end rows, which would have been planted first, my bet is that it’s seed from another variety that was leftover in the planter from another field.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Signing off with another sunset field photo. 🙂