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Southern IL farmers utilizing planting windows

A southern Illinois agronomist says farmers have been maximizing their planting windows.

John Pike, who’s based in Williamson County, tells Brownfield…

“River to river there’s been several acres that have been planted over the last few weeks,” he says, “like it has all over the state.”

He says the rains have slowed things down, but they’ve been welcomed.

“You know, we were very dry and through the winter we’ve been lucky in this area that we have had some soaking rain.”  He says, “So, I’m seeing really pretty good surface moisture in a lot of cases and pleasantly surprised to see the moisture situation down low has been able to replenish a little.”

Pike says…

“We’re sitting in pretty good shape, you know, we’re a long way from getting late on anything in this region.”  He says, “So, I think that a lot of fertilizer is already on. Fields are sprayed. So just as soon as we get a good opportunity, planters will roll and there’ll be a lot of acres knocked out.”

He says planting into proper field conditions should still be farmer’s top priority.