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Variable conditions create some challenges in fields

An agronomist with Ohio-based Seed Consultants says a challenging spring season has created some issues in fields.  

Matt Hutcheson says a wet start to the season turned to moderate drought across much of the state in June.

“There were excessively wet conditions in many areas creating fieldwork and planting delays. When we have wet field conditions, we usually see some compaction issues and some issues where fieldwork may have been done when it was too wet or marginal. We also had some pretty extreme weather events where we had some damaging hail events to crops after they emerged,” he says. “We had a period of dry weather that’s impacted the crop as well. The end of May into June was really dry and we had little to no rain in many places. That allowed people to finish up fieldwork but then we saw some issues there with uneven emergence. When they were relieved with some rain in mid-June we saw some late-emerging plants where the seed had been planted but there wasn’t enough soil moisture at the depth they were planted and so they didn’t germinate until after they had a rain so we had some variable emergence in some cases as a result of those conditions.”

He says some early-planted crops had a hard time getting established.   

“There was some stand reduction and fields that had to be assessed for replant,” he says. “(Farmers) may run into early disease issues in those situations or even crusted soils and compaction that really impacts emergence.”

Hutcheson, the soybean lead and product agronomist for Seed Consultants, says growers with questions should contact their local seed representative or district sales manager.   

Audio: Matt Hutcheson