(Spencer)—Wet weather the past week has once again brought planting and fieldwork to a standstill. Fortunately, Paul Kassel, an Iowa State University Extension Crop Specialist, tells KUOO news producers were able to take advantage of what nice weather we have had to get most of the corn crop in the ground…(click here for comment.) “A lot of the people were done around that May 17th weekend. I think the ones that weren’t finished up this past weekend, May 24th, May 25th. Soybeans, it varies. Some people are done and have been done, There are some that haven’t started on that. So it varies quite a bit. But we’re certainly behind and the crop progress, emergence and development of course is behind too because of some of the cool weather, so. We need some warm, dry weather I guess to say the least to straighten things out.”
Kassel says that while it’s been wet here, conditions are even worse just off to our southwest…(click here for comment.) “Well of course the big news is focused on like the Plymouth, Cherokee, Buena Vista counties that had the five, six, seven, eight, nine inches of rain and that’s where the focus is. And you know flooding, erosion, washing and loss of crop that way. We’ve kind of been spared up in the northern part of northwest Iowa. Even there there’s been people with two to three inches of rain that have caused some erosion issues and crops under water type of issues too, so, any way it’s been quite a reversal in the weather from what we were worried about six or eight weeks ago.”
While most of the corn is in the ground, Kassel says it’s a much different scenario for soybeans. He says that while it’s late to be planting them, that there’s still a potential to still get a decent yield…for the most part…(click here for comment.) “But we do give up a little yield potential on the negative side of things, but on the positive side of things we can still get 50 bushels of beans plus planted in late May, early June, it looks like it will probably be early June, but we still do pretty well in planting soybeans. We don’t have to change maturities either until probably mid-June, so we still can, if we can get the beans planted in the next couple of weeks, hopefully before that but if we do, not a lot of changes in how we manage the beans and if it isn’t in June we’ll give up a little yield potential but still if it’s early June we don’t give up a lot of yield potential if we plant at that time.”
Kassel says he’s concerned over the fact that what’s been happening so far is all too familiar from what happened during a spring and summer that most people who were around here at that time would just as soon forget…(click here for comment.) “I hate to mention a certain year that happened 20 years ago, but that was a, we remember the floods of that year, but the big issue was the really cool weather in June. That really set both crops way behind in maturity, so that’s a concern. If we can get dried out and get things turned around in terms of temperature and heat accumulation that will go a long way to progressing us any way to a normal crop this year.”
Kassel says all we can do for now is hope for much more in the way of sunshine and warmth, as well as a late fall.
