Walcott, IA...by the big truck stop | During the month of August my farms received less than 0.5" of rain. Luckily, the last week of July also brought 3.5" of rain from a few different storms that came pretty slow and soaked in. It will be a real test of the water holding capacity of the soils to see how the beans fill. With the cool temps I think some of the earlier beans (mid 2's) had plenty of soil moisture to fill the pods. The longer season beans (early 3's) might be more impacted as they were still flowering later into the dry month of August and those pods will have likely run short on moisture.
The thing that concerned me more was the relatively lower solar irradiance. Although it didn't rain, there were many cloudy days as well as more days with fog and haze from the cooler temps. Soybean plants aren't as efficient at photosynthesis as the corn plants and need those bright sunny days (typically warm as well) to pack on the grain.
As always, time will tell. |
August rain for beans post below
