Farming Fridays!

July 25, 2014

Let the Pollination Begin!

The soybeans are starting to fill out and begin the process of pollination. So, I’ll admit it, I was not actually aware that soybeans had purple flowers until this year. To my credit, the flowers are hid within the bush by leaves and are fairly small. But pull back the leaves and reveal the stem of the plant and you can see the tiny little purple flowers that will, eventually, turn into pods and soybeans.

Can you spot the tiny little purple flowers?

According to the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association, pollination works like this:

In July, August and September, the plants bloom. The flowers are small and vary from a white to a beautiful violet or purple. From these blossoms, the soybean plant grows small pods that contain the young seeds. The soybean is a self-pollinating plant, which means that each flower has male and female parts. A single plant can produce seed and essentially clone itself. Soybean plants produce many more flowers than they need, so many flowers never produce pods.

The flowers will eventually turn into the pods where the soybeans
are located.

Unfortunately, it has not been the best year for soybeans here. Summer has been cool and wet. Those weather conditions are definitely not ideal for soybeans. When the soil gets damp and the temperature stays cool, they react by slowing down growth.

On the other hand, the corn is doing very, very well this year. Passing by so many of our corn fields is fun because they look so uniform, strong, and tall. Although corn benefits from hot days, all the rain has been beneficial.

Too bad I’m not covering our corn
crop this year — it looks AWESOME!

So tell me – how are your crops? Is the situation where you are similar to us here in Michigan?

Farming Fridays!

April 25, 2014

Ready, Set…Plant?

No one in our area is planting yet. No one.

According to the USDA, that’s not out of the ordinary for the rest of the country either. On Tuesday of this week, the UDSA reported that only 6% of the country’s corn crop had been planted so far; normally 14% of corn seeds are in the ground at this point in the season.

Soybeans usually get planted after corn, so you can imagine that number is even lower.

But in a year like this, when the weather is still cold and dreary — and we had a snow storm just last week — it begs the question: how do farmers know when the plant their crop? Normally, April is much warmer, the snow is a old forgotten friend, and the planters are in the fields.

Our soil temperatures are still in the mid-40’s, so there won’t be any
planting happening here yet.

The answer is that you just have to know when the time is right.

The soil needs to be at least 50 degrees. You can keep track of the temperature on your own, or you can rely on someone else. In our area, our seed and chemical dealer keeps track of the temperature, as does the Michigan State Extension office. The temperature is measured from about 3 inches into the ground. Currently, our temperature is in the mid-40’s.

But you also have to make sure that when you put those seeds out there that it will germinate. That means our farmers have to play weatherman too — you certainly don’t want to plant right before a cold spell! Too much rain and not enough sun can definitely spell disaster (or, at least, a replant!).

A farmer is looking at the current and upcoming weather patterns and the soil temperature.

Farming Fridays!

October 25, 2013

Welcome to Michigan….Weather

You know you’re from Michigan when you can experience every season in one day.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad today, but we’ve been getting….wait for it…snow. Even living up here, snow this early isn’t that usual, and certainly not the kind that will actually stick to the ground.

Of course, that might not look quite as impressive, but my mom took this one in the afternoon of our deck:

October 24, 2013…no, seriously.

The real problem this creates is that we can’t get into our fields because they’re wet, wet, wet. As you can probably tell from the photos I’ve posted before, the combine, wagons, semi-truck, and trailers are heavy equipment. When the ground is soft we try to avoid driving through the fields. It can cause ruts (you know, those deeps grooves in the soil) and also compact the soil. Compaction is an issue that can make the ground less productive.