Despite planting start scare, Charles City area crops are looking pretty good right now

By Bob Fenske, Of the Reporter

As ISU Extension Agronomist Terry Basol talked about the latest Crop Progress and Condition Report, his thoughts wandered back in time – to six weeks ago to be exact.

“In early May, the guys were starting to wonder if we were ever going to get the crop into the field,” said Basol, who is based at the Northeast Iowa Research and Demonstration Farm near Nashua. “Now, it’s just exploding. Considering where we were at six weeks ago it’s not too bad, and you can argue we’ve caught up.”

The numbers in the Crop Progress and Condition Report that was released Monday by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service certainly show just how far crops have come in a short amount of time.

Six weeks ago, for example, just 9% of the corn in Iowa had been planted, compared to the five-year average of almost 45%. In the latest report, though, 95% of the state’s corn crop has “emerged,” which is above the five-year average of 94%. And 97% of the state’s soybean crop has been planted while the five-year average is 94%.

According to this week’s report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship,  97% of the corn crop in the Northcentral District that includes Floyd County and 92% of the corn in the Northeast District that includes Chickasaw County has emerged, and virtually all the soybean seed is in the fields.

“We’re right where we need to be right now,” Basol said, “and if you would have told me those numbers six weeks ago, I might have thought you were off your rocker. But right when we got a little nervous if we were ever going to get going with planting, we got a nice window and then we’ve had some pretty nice conditions since then.”

Although he said area fields are still “behind some on heat units,” despite the heat wave earlier this week, soil moisture contents are in excellent shape.

Again, the numbers are there to verify that, as 93% of the acres in the Northcentral District are rated adequate or surplus topsoil moisture, and 97% of the Northeast District have either adequate or surplus topsoil moisture profiles.

The quick growth of plants, though, has led to a challenge for area growers, namely making sure they can do their field operations like post-emergent insecticide and herbicide spraying before plants are too big to allow equipment in the fields.

“Again, that’s a problem I didn’t think was possible a few weeks ago, but we’ll take that compared to what we were thinking we might have because we couldn’t get the crop into the ground,” Basol said.

He said younger corn and soybean plants can take some heat right now. And they will, too, if the forecast is right as temperatures are expected to be in the 90s for three days beginning on Sunday.

“It’s definitely going to give the crop another push, but they can take the heat a little bit better (now) than, say, when corn is pollinating and silking,” he said.

All in all, save for what Basol called “some crusting issues for soybeans,” the 2022 growing season has gotten off to a strong start.

“We got the rain we needed to activate herbicides,” he said, “and even though we have a long ways to go, considering when we were able to plant, we’re on a good track right now.”