What is the best timing for soybean desiccation?
2 Oct 244m 1s

Kevin Matthews talks about the process of desiccating soybeans to prepare for harvest is. Starting early in the morning, the desiccation helps prevent pod shattering, especially during hot and dry conditions.

00:00 So we're out here this morning. This is, uh, where we had our field day at in Cooly. We're desiccating these soybeans, 00:06 we're getting 'em ready to harvest. We started about five 30 this morning, and I'll be done here shortly just about 00:13 the time the sun comes up. Um, man, look at that beautiful sunrise, but what do they say? Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. 00:22 We got a storm coming up in, uh, central Valley there going up towards Tennessee and Johnny's area, and we're probably going 00:30 to get a little bit of rain out of it. We actually want some rain for our double crop soybeans that will help fill them out. 00:36 This is, this is the beautiful morning. They've got a lot of due on these soybeans and, uh, that is aiding in the desiccation process 00:45 because we have to drive through these soybeans with a sprayer, as you can see. Um, and that is a benefit to prevent those pots 00:53 that are already getting mature, that they don't knock the soybeans out. So, going to get in the cab here. 01:01 We're going to get to spraying and I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about how and why we're doing what we're doing. 01:07 So we're, we've got many different varieties here. And when you have those, all those different varieties, it makes it a challenge to know when is the right time 01:20 to do your desiccation. Obviously, fortunately I got a pretty good team of folks that can help me with it 01:26 and, um, we're in the field quite often, so the reason I'm doing it so early in the morning is I'll either do it late at night 01:34 or early in the morning, but I got some meetings I gotta do here in a little while and I've gotta be in attendance that 01:41 I needed to get this done to get the timing right with the weather forecast. We got some rain coming in, in about three to four days. 01:48 We're gonna have a three or four day rainy period. And I want, when that rain stops, I want these beans. Uh, getting ready to harvest. We got our harvest sample. 02:00 You gotta look at, depending on what products you're using. So with the stage you're in, 02:05 we should be in here probably within about 14 days that cut these soybeans, the group threes, they should have been sprayed earlier, 02:14 but we're trying to do it. So we moved the combine down here one time to harvest all the research plots, 02:21 and it's about 70 acres of soybean plots here that were harvesting. We've got a lot of fertility trials that we've got here 02:32 that look really good studying the potassium and the response to different hybrids, similar to what we did on the corn. 02:38 The desiccation is what sort of evens the playing field out. And by driving through it with all these plants, real, Dan, 02:47 for those plants that you've seen in the, or in the pictures that are pods are already getting brown. Well, if it is in the middle of the day and hot 02:56 and dry here during the fall, those can become real and those soybeans can pop out. And we do not want no the none of the soybeans to pop out 03:06 and therefore we choose to do our desiccation early in the mornings and usually by 10 o'clock 03:12 in the morning, we want to be done. We want, by the time the de dries off, we want to stop. We're only going to desiccate 03:18 what we think we can harvest that day. That's something Matt Miles has taught us all and he's, he's kind of the godfather of this process. 03:28 Taught, taught each one of us tremendous amounts. Great, appreciate that. But just a little bit about 03:36 what we're doing, why we're doing it. If you have any questions, just uh, put it in there on the member question side. 03:45 We will, we will do everything we can to get you headed in the right direction, stay safe and if you, anything we can do to help, we do appreciate it. 03:55 Be glad to do it.

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