(Lakefield, Mn.)– If there would ever be a fall when an early frost would be especially devastating to farmers, this would be it. Jim Nesseth of Extended Ag Services in Lakefield says the fact the majority of crops were planted late this year makes them especially vulnerable…
“We’ve just got a lot of late planted crops out there. They just need more time. Especially I think on the soybean side. But we’ve even got some later planted corn that’s just kind of been slow to mature, but especially on the soybean side that’s going to hurt us.”
Nesseth says, however, some of the earlier planted soybeans are reaching maturity with leaves starting to change color…
“Some of those beans were planted early, you know, in mid-April and one-one, one-two varieties and so they’re actually mature and getting into that R-7 and you know, those will probably be, they have a good chance of being harvested here yet this month and so it’s kind of a tail of two cities there with the soybeans. We’ve got some that were planted probably six weeks later than that. The soybean planting seemed to stretch out for about two months and so we’ll have some beans that are definitely going to need a friendly fall, you know, get into October before we can get free of some frost scares and potential frost damage. It’s going to be, I think, a harvest that is going to be stretched out by the time some of these varieties mature.”
He says corn development is especially variable…
“We’ve got some that are getting close to black layer, some of the earlier planted stuff. But most of that is dented and it’s about at that where we’re getting the stuff that’s going to be getting cut here for silage has come along pretty nicely, but again there we’re going to need, like the soybeans, we’re going to need a really good September here to get a lot of that corn to mature. The corn, when you look at analyzing the corn side of the rotation, we’ve just got some fields that look pretty tough. We’ve got a little tar spot showing up in some of these fields. Fortunately it’s showing up late enough here so there’s no need to do any fungicide applications. We’re going to have a big range in yields with the corn and I think in most cases we’re probably going to be a little disappointed in what we get for yield.”
Nesseth says some producers to the west of us are starting to cut silage.
