Soybean Update:
A lot of the soybeans are now at R5 to R5.5 which means they no longer grow up or out. The rows are mostly closed in 30” rows but it is still possible to find tiny weeds trying to reach sunlight. When we reach R5, we are about 40 days from maturity, however, moving from R6 (full seed in top nodes) to R7 (one pod reaches maturity on the plant) can take anywhere from 9 to 30 days depending on maturity and overall health of the soybeans and the weather. Someone asked today when we would be combining soybeans – I don’t know the answer to that yet, but 40 days from now is September 20th – that would get us close I feel like, but last year it was later. Last year the first check was on 9/22 for soybeans, but things didn’t really get going until the first week of October.
When are we safe from aphids? – This question has been asked a couple times the last 5-7 days. Not until we get the leaves changing colors. As long as the soybean is still green, it is still adding seed size. The bigger the beans, the bigger the yield. We’ve talked about estimating corn yield, but estimating soybean yield is nearly impossible until you know the soybean seeds per pound. BB’s don’t add up as fast as marbles in the tank.
White mold – This topic would normally be in the pest section, but we saw the first plants with white mold last week and now we’ve had some pictures of white mold sent to us. The rainfall caused some of the beans to “squat” in the fields and that makes it more obvious where to look for the white mold. We had such a dry late June, early July it felt like we would avoid the issue, but with the spores able to infect the flowers mid-way up the plant we are seeing the results of it now. I felt like we were safe once the beans were bigger, but many of the lower nodes also set additional flowers when we started getting some rains in mid-July and that is how these plants became infected. We can’t fix it now, all we can do is make sure we plan for it the next time the soybeans are in these fields.