Crops report for Richland County

For the most part, producers have switched from planting mode to crop protection mode. I did have an opportunity to get out to the southwestern portion of the county and in both the irrigated and dryland areas, the crops are coming along well.

I had an interesting question from a producer who was seeing some weird growth on his spring wheat planting. The picture below is what he was seeing and is attributed to cold temperatures occuring as the wheat leaf was developing and the leaf gets trapped in the sheath.

The problem is more aesthetic than harmful and should not affect yield.

The recent wet conditions have the potential to create a few problems. The first being that many of our crop diseases prefer moist, humid conditions. If you have fields with some disease history, you should probably consider doing some crop scouting in the coming weeks. The second issue raised with our recent weather pattern is that, because soils have been too wet, some producers have not been able to get their herbicides applied in a timely manner. I would not go as far as to say that there are a great deal of weed escapes out there but as the rains continue to fall, the weeds will continue to grow and there is a potential for weeds to get out of hand.