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August 21
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 The
last two days have been rather warm ... in the upper 90's. I
had hoped this week's temperatures would be like last week.
Our field doesn't look as good as it did last week, but that's
partially due, not only to the heat, but also, the windy conditions.
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 Plants
in the row still appear to be in good shape. There aren't as
many insects around as there were a couple weeks ago. Last
week I mentioned the plants would start turning a dull green color
soon. The reason for that is the fact the plants are
translocating fewer carbohydrates (from photosynthesis) down to the
roots, which causes root development to slow and eventually stop,
but more importantly, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria are receiving
fewer nutrients as well. When this occurs, the bacteria stop
fixing nitrogen for the plants and the plants lose their nice green
color. Our plants are at that stage right now. We dug up
some plants to look at the nodules, but most of them were just empty
shells and decaying. So, there's little or no nitrogen-fixing
occurring in our field now.
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 Our first plant
still looks good. It hasn't started to lose any leaves yet.
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 Our second plant
is looking good too. I can see a couple lower leaves turning
yellow. The lower leaves will start yellowing first because
they are older and yellowing will move up the plant.
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 It's
easy to find pods (at the four uppermost nodes) with seeds inside
that fill the whole seed capsule. This plant is at the R6
stage of development (green bean stage). The plant is still
taking up nutrients from the soil, but that will slow dramatically
within the next two weeks. Whole plant dry matter accumulation
will maximize at the same time.
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Trivia
Question for the Day: In a pod that contains three beans,
which bean is the largest? Is it the first, middle, or last
bean? If you guessed the middle bean ... you are
correct! How about the next largest? It's the
first bean (the bean closest to where the pod is attached to the
stem).
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