Warm weather + regular rains = a very happy corn crop for this week’s Follow the Field update!
June 11, 2021 Update:
Soybeans (49 days)
First up, soybeans. The cover crop continues to break down, making this look more and more like a soybean field with each passing day. The dead cover crop (straw-colored grass between each row of soybeans) gives the field an oddly bright yellow/tan look driving by – more like what we would see around harvest time in the fall than we are used to in June.
Here’s an overhead shot at the rows. You can also see that we still have quite a bit of groundcover from last year’s cornstalks, which is helping keep weeds at bay.
The beans have been putting out lots of new leaves this week, so they were quite photogenic when I went out to the field for my weekly photoshoot last night. 🙂
Like I’ve talked about previously, there’s not a whole lot we need to do here while the beans grow. Around this time of year, we often will consider another herbicide application to kill the weeds that showed up between planting and now and keep them from competing with the beans – before long, the soybeans will be too big to spray, so it’s kind of a now-or-never decision. We have a couple of weeks before it’s too late, so we’ll continue to scout the fields and decide whether or not it’s something we need this year. Fortunately, the cover crop seems to have been helpful at keeping weeds away.
Corn (45 days)
While the beans didn’t change a whole lot visually, the corn grew something like 10 inches in just a week! Had to swap my ruler for a yardstick this week.
The corn fields look like, well, corn fields as you drive by now. Crazy difference just a few days of warm weather makes!
This field was sprayed with a herbicide this week just to make sure weeds stay away. Same reason as the beans – we want to do it before the crop gets too big and we also want to make sure the crop can take off without any competition from the weeds. It won’t be too long before the corn gets big enough to shade the space between rows and keep weeds from germinating.
You’ve probably heard the old adage “knee high by the fourth of July.” It’s crazy to think that this corn is probably going to be over my head (so well over 6 feet tall) in a few short weeks!
And we’ll wrap up with the obligatory sunset photo. I sure appreciate the later sunsets to give me more time to get out to the field for photos before it gets dark!
More next week!