With much of Northwest Iowa seeing less than 3” of rainfall so far this growing season, we feel fortunate there were a few timely isolated rains across our farm, which is just west of Fort Dodge. While we still need a good rain, our beans are very healthy as we watch them progress past the R3 growth phase.
Our trial field is planted with 30” row spacing, and our AMS treated beans appear to be consistently 1-3” taller than the non-treated control plants. On average, our node count shows the AMS treated beans had four more nodes than the non-treated ones. We have also noticed the non-treated beans have their nodes stacked shorter with most of their pods set on the bottom 23” of the plant. We attribute this phenomenon to stress from the cool, dry May and the early June heat.
We recently took a close look at the root nodules on our plants. It was interesting to see that the nodes from the treated plants appear to be a brighter red in color, indicating that they are healthy and actively fixing nitrogen!
