The rain that we got late last week was welcomed with corn starting to tassel. This week, most of the corn around here has tasseled and has silks out. Soybeans are entering the R3 stage as plants are putting little pods in the upper nodes. For the month of June at the Orr center, rainfall was less than 50% of what we normally get. Hopefully we get more rainfall this week to further help the crop.

Last week stayed mostly dry with the exception of a very light rain shower on the 5th of June. Corn is turning dark green and is taking off in growth. Corn and soybean post herbicide applications are well underway. Last week and this week also seems to be ideal to get hay baled.

Last week remained dry despite the small chances of rain. The rain didn’t hit this region until Friday late morning with nearly an inch of rain total throughout the weekend. A lot of corn acres got sprayed with post herbicide applications last week. This morning, much of the corn appears to be in the V4 to V5 growth stage. The earlier planted soybean is around the V2 growth stage.

With temperatures being in the mid 80s to near 90s, conditions dried up nicely to give a window for guys to wrap up their planting over the weekend and early this week. Many farmers have early corn post herbicide applications going out this week. Thanks to the recent rainfall that we had, this region no longer shows up as abnormally dry on the U.S. Drought Monitor map.

It seems like this will be another wet week in Pike County. Over Mother’s Day weekend, there was a lot of planting and spraying being done. It seems like most farmers around here have very few acres left and some are even finished planting for the spring. With the exception of fields planted over last weekend weekend, it appears that all other fields that are planted have emerged and appear to be doing well. This rainfall will provide adequate activation of residual herbicides to hopefully keep our fields free of weeds until post herbicide application timing.

Early this morning, a storm went through and left 7 tenths of an inch of rain at the Orr Research Center outside of Perry, IL. Many crop acres were planted early to mid April and appear to be doing well. Corn that was planted the week of April 8 is at the V1-V2 growth stage while soybeans planted that same week have their unifoliate leaves unrolled.