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Archive for the ‘Crops’ Category

Blustery Bean Harvest

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

-E. Taylor 2009 KBS Dry Bean Harvest 011

Tuesday we headed up to the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center to harvest our first dry beans for the year. The beans we harvested were for our graduate student, Ryan Holmes’ project. He is looking at three different row spacings and three different populations in black ‘Zorro’ and small red ‘Merlot’ beans. Throughout the season he has been looking at canopy closure, Western Bean Cutworm population levels/damage, weed populations, etc. Just before harvest we pulled samples to look at the number of pods per plant and the number of beans per pod to look for correlations with the row spacings and plant populations. This was no easy task given that the sustained wind speed was around 15-18 mph, with gusts of up to 40 mph. Bags scattered about, our truck cover blew around, and even the combine hood got caught up in the breeze, but we were still able to get our samples.

Next week we are planning to start our sugar beet harvests. These are always fun days because the whole crew is out riding on the beet harvester taking weights, getting subsamples for sugar analysis, and singing the occasional round of the Sesame Street sugar beet song.

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MTO meeting

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

-E. Taylor

Last Thursday night I was invited to speak at a Michigan Thumb Organics meeting. This group meets monthly to communicate and foster partnerships among organic growers in Michigan’s thumb. The focus of Thursday’s meeting was on the successes and challenges of their cooperative snap bean effort (green bean). In order to meet the demands of their market, the growers have had to work together with staggered plantings so that beans could be harvested every 4 days throughout the season. They are using a shared harvester and shared grading facility and all in all it has worked out, but since this was the first year of this venture, there are improvements that can be made for next year.

I had the opportunity to talk with the growers about our on-farm trials that will be held next year looking at cover crops preceding dry beans. As a result, two growers from the area will be participating, bringing the total number of on-farm trial sites to nine!

Snap bean harvester

Posted in Organic, Travels, Vegetables | No Comments »

Monsanto Technology Tour

Friday, August 27th, 2010

-E. Taylor

Wednesday we attended one of the Monsanto Technology Tours hosted at their Mason, MI research farm. There were 7 stops covering a wide range of topics that included traditional corn breeding in Michigan, emerging herbicides, dairy silage, insect resistance refuges, and new crop traits and seed treatments. This was a good opportunity for our group to see what products Monsanto is planning to market in the near future so that we can address any questions that may arise at our extension meetings.

Posted in Crops, Herbicides | No Comments »

2010 Bean and Beet Field Day

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

-E. Taylor

Yesterday was the annual field day held at the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center in Richville, MI. This was the second year that the field day has been held at the farm’s new location. This year’s tour offered more one-on-one interaction between the attendees and the researchers which received positive feedback. There were researchers there from the many different disciplines that work at the “Bean and Beet Farm”, including pathologists, breeders, entomologists, extension specialists, and of course weed scientists. Christy Sprague and Alicia Spangler were at the sugarbeet stop to talk about the many different weed management trials and Alicia’s M.S. project looking at varying nitrogen fertilizer rates in combination with weed removal timings. Gary Powell and Ryan Holmes were at the dry bean stop to answer weed control and dessication questions as well as to talk about Ryan’s M.S. project looking at row spacing and populations as it relates to canopy closure, weed management, and some insects in black and small red beans. The field day turned out to be a great success and we look forward to doing in again next year.