July 27, 2015 – Medstead Coming Out of Flowering

Flowering is wrapping up and the pods are starting to fill nicely at the site in Medstead. The main racemes have completed flowering while the side branches have a few buds and flowers remaining. Upon scouting through the field, there were no economically damaging pests detected.

Panoramic View of the Site on July 27th, 2015

The last blog post had a comparison of two plants- one from a treated strip and one from the untreated. The overhead view of the field offered no differences, but when two plants were laid side by side there was a contrast. After going back into the field it’s more likely that the plants picked were different not due to the boron treatment but other factors such as topography or variance in soil texture (It is hard to tell on the picture below but the band of flowering plants along the top of the picture are on a knoll). The aerial view of the site shows that within the strips there are differing areas of maturity that do not follow the trial lines.

Aerial View of the Site

Treated Plants                                                                Untreated Plants

Walking through the field there were no further differences observed within the trial strips. The real test of the trial will come at harvest when the yields will be determined with a weigh wagon.