Southeast Iowa Crop Conditions

Planting is pretty well wrapped up for this year except for the occasional replanting of drown outs and patching in the areas that were too wet when the rest of the field was planted. Corn and soybean emergence has been extremely fast this year with plentiful soil moisture and above average temps after planting. Many corn fields only took 7-8 days from planting to 90% emerged and soybeans were coming up 4-5 days after planting.

Corn is growing quickly and will soon enter the rapid growth stage. June weather is expected to be warmer than average, which will only push corn along that much faster assuming adequate moisture levelsare maintained. So far, adequate moisture has not been a limiting factor and is likely helping to hide some of the sins committed (getting in the field before soil conditions were right) during spring tillage and planting.

Soybeans are coming along nicely with the warm weather. The only watch out we have seen are fields that were planted when soils were a little on the wet side and then the warmth dried the top soil very quickly and caused some issues with emergence. Those areas have been fairly limited and a little rain this week will help alleviate the issue.

Grain markets have taken a hit over the last week as political issues and generally favorable weather have depressed prices. Both the corn and soybean crops have historically high good/excellent crop condition ratings across the corn belt according to the USDA. While early condition ratings do not predict final yield,we are off to a generally good start and most of the Northwestern 1/4 of Iowa has sufficient soil moisture to withstand a little dry weather during the early part of summer.

Here are a couple pictures of a field of corn that did not have a pond but did have small areas stay a little too wet for a little too long. When the corn emerged, there was a very uniform stand with good plant population. Now there is about a 50% stand in those areas as can be seen by the area that is more black instead of green. These are the areas that improved drainage will eliminate in wet springs.