Farmers made it to the end of May with most likely a big sigh of relief. Although they are nowhere near last year’s “ahead of schedule” numbers, and excessive rain has provided a challenge for this year, much of the state of Illinois is right around the five year average percentage wise as far as how much of the corn and soybeans have been planted.
But as Tom Fricke of the Vermilion County Farm Bureau cautions; locally, the northern half portion of Vermilion County may still have some catching up to do.
AUDIO: There could be some areas north of Danville; that area, Iroquois County, Ford County, have really been inundated with rain more so than other parts of the county. So that could have in impact on the progress that they’ve had so far.
Fricke says, for those in Northern Vermilion County, this probably means even more than usual of planting a variety of seeds that can mature at different rates; so that all is on time but spread out for the fall harvest.
AUDIO: If you had a longer maturity corn, you’ll probably switch to a shorter one, if the seed companies have the seed available for you. A lot of areas of the county, even if they got in early, have had to do some replanting; if the rain came at the wrong time.
As far as what do we need in June; Fricke says the key item is getting adequate soil moisture deep down. And the way to get that is consistent rain, but not too much at once.
AUDIO: The growing plants have not developed a deep taproot to find moisture. They’ve had plenty of moisture at the surface level, so they haven’t had to work to find that moisture. So we don’t want the rain to completely shut off for the next six weeks.
So now that we are past Memorial Day; eyes turn to the old fashioned slogan of corn being “knee high by the 4th of July;” which of course is now updated to be preferably shoulder high, or more.
