We have gotten quite a bit of rain in the last week in LaSalle County, with most areas seeing between 2-3 inches. Some areas in Bureau County received up to 4 inches of precipitation in the past week. With this, many fields have fairly saturated soils, but I have not noticed any ponding. Overall crops are looking very good and progressing well. I have not seen excessive disease or pest pressure in most fields. Corn is at R3 (milk), and soy is at R5 (beginning seed). Weeds are getting very large in some fields though (see image of waterhemp).

In general, all the crops are looking good with very few issues other than weather related problems. Last week’s surge in aphid populations is now a thing of the past with rainstorms, disease and predators sending the populations into a nosedive.

It’s been another wet week in Champaign County. While starting my survey in the southern half of the county on Wednesday (7/31) this week, yet another front was moving through the area with more rain in the forecast for the coming days. Although we have seen frequent storms, the Illinois Soil and Water Survey weather station in Champaign received only approximately 1 inch of rain in total in the past 7 days, with perhaps a bit more in the southwest portion of the county. In that part of the county, there were a few fields with flooded out areas, but crop loss from outright flooding or diseases associated with waterlogged soils appears to still be relatively minimal, with most corn and soybean fields in the area still looking very healthy. Soils were obviously wet as I walked through fields, but still firm and not waterlogged in most areas. Corn fields surveyed ranged from R1 to R3, and full-season soybean fields surveyed ranged from R2 to R4. The one field of double-crop soybeans I found was just starting to flower.

The good news is that it rained, but the bad news is it has not stopped for a few days now. The mid May planted corn is at brown silk and hopefully successfully pollinated. April planted soybeans are tall and a bit tangled after recent storms. No major issues found. Bacterial blight seems to reappeared after cool and wet weather.

This week, I went east and surveyed the southern half of Vermilion County. Overall, the corn and soybean crop looked healthy, and soil conditions were near ideal to only mildly wet in most areas. However, there were some low-lying soybean fields showing pockets of stressed plants showing symptoms of root rot and a few instances where the plants have died. This has been a common observation of my past few reports in surrounding counties with differing levels of severity. In southern Vermilion County currently, crop loss appears to be lower than it is a bit further west and southwest. Most soybean fields I stopped at were at late R2 to early R3. Japanese beetles are easy to find in most fields, but defoliation levels were still well below threshold in fields I stopped at. Most corn was R1-R2, and as noted in Nick Seiter’s post, a few of the fields surveyed had corn leaf aphid colonies present.

Scout continuously in corn and soybean field. Corn is the hot topic for the week. Corn Aphids have continued to move in the area and are taking their toll on certain hybrids. Soybeans have been fairly clean overall from insects or disease pressure