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A snowy end to fall fieldwork in north Iowa

The season’s first snowstorm has ended fall fieldwork in north-central Iowa.

Worth County Extension education specialist Dennis Johnson says harvest went smoothly.

“The thing that happens then because of that is we can get a lot of tillage done, and that definitely happened this year. Had a little rain spell just after harvest, but it wasn’t enough to keep people out of the field very long. And I would say as far as next year we’re ready to go for another good year as far as having a lot of tillage out of the way.”

He tells Brownfield plentiful rainfall during the summer gave growers hope yields would be outstanding.

“Until we got to fall, and because of that rain, maybe a little bit too much, we had southern rust (coming) into the corn fields and really caused some problems. So people who didn’t really go out and take care of the disease problems (saw) depressed yields.”

Johnson says area soybeans also suffered from disease pressure this year.