Published: August 02, 2009 11:32 pm      

Area crops lag behind

Cooler weather affects development

DANVILLE — A late growing season and cooler-than-normal summer temperatures mean crops across Vermilion County are definitely well behind schedule.

Vermilion County Farm Bureau information officer Tom Fricke said some farmers in the northern area of the county have expressed dismay with their field conditions. They said in recent days they were afraid fall weather would come before some of the 2009 crop properly matures.

“Soybeans are way behind,” Fricke said. “Corn is tasselling … we’ve been lucky that we haven’t had a lot of those 90-plus degree days, but at the same time we’ve had too many 70-degree days that have kept it slowed down a little bit, too.”

Many soybean fields didn’t get planted until the first of June, which is causing some stress for area growers, he said.

Alan Chesnut farms in the Ridge Farm area.

“The corn is tasselling. The wet spots where (corn) was damaged are behind,” he said. “Some of those spots might not mature because of the stress that was put on them this spring.”

Soybeans in that area look good for the time of year they were planted, he said.

“They’re looking good for the conditions we had this spring,” he said. “We had bad conditions, so looking good this year compared to last year is a different (comparison).”

Early harvest indications are hard to find at this point.

“We can’t do yield checks yet,” he said, because “kernels are not determined and pollination isn’t done.”

Cooler temperatures this year had a different effect than they would have in other years when hot days were more pervasive.

“The cooler temperatures are … sometimes helpful and sometimes not,” Chesnut said. “In the latest growing season, it’s not as helpful as it could have been in the past.”

The corn plant needs a certain number of growing degree days in order for it to mature properly, he said.

Growing degree days, according to the University of Florida IFAS extension Web site, “are used to relate plant growth, development, and maturity to air temperature.”

Farmers use a growing degree days formula that determines development stage using various temperature data.

“GDD is based on the idea that the development of a plant will occur only when the temperature exceeds a specific base temperature for a certain number of days. Each type of plant is adapted to grow best over its own specific base temperature,” accord-ing to the extension Web site.

For now, the corn crop has fewer degree days than what would be considered normal for this time of year, and development is a little behind schedule, he said.

Beans, which don’t depend on degree days, are a little behind at this point because they “don’t like wet conditions,” Chesnut said.

“That’s what’s holding them back a bit.”

Steve Fourez farms in the area between Sidell and Fairmount, and concurs with Chesnut that beans are hurting more than corn right now.

“Things got off to a pretty rough start,” he said, of the planting season. “The cooler weather has some of us just sitting idle.”

Fourez also keeps close track of his GDD indicators.

“I keep playing with growing degree days calculators. If I used this year’s planting dates, we’re already a month behind,” he said.

Fourez is a little concerned about irregularity in some fields he’s seen.

“For some reason, it’s as uneven, particularly in the corn through a given field as I’ve ever seen,” he said. “There are plants that are tasselling and pollinating and you might be able to start counting rows and kernels, and some now are just starting to shoot silks, so it’s going to be so irregular.”

Normally, pollination begins around the Fourth of July — assuming planting was done by April 20 or so, he said.

“We’re well past that. It’s just now getting to where things are starting to advance through that process,” Fourez said.

No one knows when this year’s harvest will begin, but it’s safe to say it will probably be a little later.

In his area in recent years, farmers would begin cutting beans about the second week in September and get well into the corn harvest by the end of September.

But this year, he’s guessing it will be later. Farmers might begin harvesting beans toward the end of September.

“Corn’s not going to roll until sometime in October,” he estimated.