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July 6
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 Our field continues to grow. I’m seeing more crabgrass
and other weeds showing up ....
and that’s not good. I guess we can tolerate some weeds in our field,
but not too many! I’m just worried that in about a month when we need the
moisture there will be too many weeds using the water instead of the
soybean plants. The soil surface is starting to get dry so I dug a hole to
see where the moisture level was. I could get some moist soil about 3
inches deep.
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 The plants in our the marked row are getting
pretty dense- you can’t see through them now. It is going to get hot here today.
Right now the temperature is about 90 F, but it is suppose to hit 100 F today
and even hotter over the weekend.I sure hope we get a rain next week. We’ve got
some nasty crabgrass plants growing near our row. I’m going to have to do
something about that! (I don’t want anyone to think I’m not a good farmer!
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 Do you remember from Tuesday I was looking
for something? Well, I don’t see what I’m looking for on this plant, but I do see
“it” on some other plants. Let’s take a look at our
second plant.
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 Here’s our second plant and it now is in
the V8 stage. But hold on, I see something purple in the middle of the plant. What
do you think it is? Let’s look and see.
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There it is ... a soybean flower. That’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s pretty isn’t it?
The first flower you see will form at about the third or fourth node (A node
is were the leaf is attached to the stem.There’s always a bump on the stem so when the leaf falls
off you can still see the scar or node.)Not all soybean flowers are purple, some varieties have white
flowers. This type and shape of flower is typical for legume plants (Remember
soybean is a legume).
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 After a day or two you can find flowers
everywhere on the stem, like you see here. So, that means the last picture was
taken a day or two ago and that’s correct. When the plants start flowering our
staging system changes. Instead of using the “V” staging system, we switch to the
“R” staging system. R stands for reproductive stage (V stands for vegetative). A
plant with only one flower is in the R1 stage or beginning flowering stage, but
when you see a bunch of flowers on the stem,like this plant has, it is in the R2
stage or full bloom stage. You are probably wondering, “will the plant continue to
grow and develop more leaves”? Good question and the answer is yes, the plant will
continue to develop more leaves for at least another month. So, if the plant produces
more leaves for a month how long will the plant continue to flower? You guessed it,
for about a month.
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