I’ve started to receive a few reports of damage from early season caterpillar pests, including true armyworm, black cutworm, and variegated cutworm. Concentrate your scouting efforts on fields that border wheat, other small grains, or had a grass cover crop for armyworm, and fields that had sub-optimal winter annual weed control or a legume cover crop for the cutworm species. If you find larvae, note the sizes – larger (> 1 inch) larvae do the most damage, but are also the closest to pupating and “cycling out” of the damaging stage. Populations of larvae with mixed sizes or that include predominantly smaller larvae will be with us for longer.

Excellent soybean field under irrigation near Valmeyer (Monroe County). High yield potential and probably one of the best weed management programs I have seen this season.

Many areas in Northeastern Illinois are experiencing a level of drought conditions. Corn is wrapping in some fields during the day in response to temperatures and lack of moisture. Soybean growth has slowed and most are hoping for more favorable conditions before applying post herbicides in this crop. When applied under the dry conditions post corn herbicide conditions were less than ideal. We encourage growers to evaluate the effectiveness of the applications within 1 to 2 weeks. Wheat in the area appears to be hastening to maturity, it may be an early wheat harvest in northern Illinois.

A couple of much needed rain events late last week and early this week brought some relief to the very dry conditions we were starting to see in the region. POST herbicide as well as side-dressing applications have been ongoing this week. Some weed species spotted (mostly at field edges) include morningglory, giant ragweed, field bindweed, Canada thistle, and waterhemp. Late-planted corn is at the V6-V7 stages, and soybeans are at V2-V3.

Our area still continues to be dry. A few areas have got spot showers, but most have only left a tenth or two at most which only brings some short-term relief. Overall, crops do look fairly good for the lack of moisture, but week to week growth is slow with limited water. Crops do show some stress in the middle of sunny days especially with the fairly low humidity levels, but recover during the evening. The driest areas are still in the central part of the county only having received a 0.5″ of rain in the last two months. Wheat is rapidly drying down, I have not seen any harvest yet, but do expect to see some combines starting to roll in the next week if the weather pattern stays the same. Here’s to another week hoping for more widespread rain for all that need it the most!

Corn is showing symptoms of stress due to the high temperatures and no precipitation the last three-four weeks. Beans were planted May 19th and have emerged. The beans have received no precipitation since planting.