Rain returned to central Illinois this week, including a storm with heavy rain deciding to move in as I was driving out to take this week’s photos. Didn’t spend a lot of time out there because I could see the rain coming across the fields to the west, but got what I needed for this week’s update!
July 16, 2021 Update:
Soybeans (84 days)
In general, soybeans in the area are getting visibly bigger from the road. These soybeans are now just over knee-high and seem to be doing pretty well given all of the rain we’ve had in the last 30 days.
Nice and bushy plants are making a great canopy between rows. You can still see what remains of the cover crop between the rows.
We talked about how soybeans begin to flower after the summer solstice – here’s evidence of the first few pods beginning to form! Soybeans flower from bottom to top, so pods will be the furthest along towards the bottom of the plant as the soybeans keep growing taller and adding flowers throughout the rest of the summer.
So many soybean plants!
And here was the oncoming storm which meant I was moving fast to get these photos and avoid getting soaked with rain. It was a pretty torrential downpour there for a while.
Corn (80 days)
The corn has reached its full height potential at at least 7.5 – 8 feet tall. This field tasseled since last week and has begun to put out ears. Each ear begins as a small bundle of leaves and a mop of silks – as the tassel releases pollen and pollen lands on the silks, each silk will become a kernel of corn on the developing ear. Pollination has just begun (I was covered in a fine yellow dust and I was only in the field for a couple of minutes) and will continue over the next several days.
I held the camera at eye level for this picture. The corn is really, really tall.
And here are the tassels. This field is a little uneven compared to what we would like it to be – that means that the corn did not germinate all at the same time and grow at the same rate, so some corn plants are ever so slightly behind others (we’re talking like a day difference). It should all work out fine, although uneven growth is always a concern during pollination because you want to make sure that as many silks as possible are pollinated.
And here’s the mop of silks on one of the ears – it almost looks like the fledgling ear has a full head of hair. If you look really closely, you can see all of the fine hairs on each silk strand – that helps it to capture pollen grains. It only takes one grain of pollen to pollinate a silk, so there’s a very good chance that each has a chance to pollinate as the field is literally covered in a fine layer of yellow pollen dust. Silks are also very sticky at this stage, which helps with pollen capture.
The rice-like pieces on the leaves come from the tassel and are what the pollen comes from. If you look closely, you can see the yellow pollen collecting in the grooves of the leaves.
And that’s all for this week’s update! It’s an exciting and important time for these crops as they work on pollination and beginning to grow what we will harvest later this fall. We’re fortunate to be looking at a week of nice, consistent temperatures in the 80s rather than really hot 90-100 degree days like we get at this time of year sometime.
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