Crop Watcher 10/16/09

Todd Easton Coles County October 16 2009: A couple more mistimed rain showers came into the area this week slowing harvest progress once again. We received over an inch in most areas on top of already muddy fields making a bad situation worse. Soybean harvesting has progressed to over a third done in most parts of the county with yields still in the 50’s and 60’s for the most part. Corn harvest has been curtailed by most everyone concentrating on soybean harvest but should pick up over the weekend with beans being too wet to cut for a few days. I finally took the end rows off of some of my Memorial Day weekend planted corn Thursday afternoon and the moisture was a little higher than I was hoping at 26% but that may be what we harvest a lot of the corn at the way this year is going. Yield on the end rows was 192 bushels dry which surprised me after seeing so much compaction damage about everywhere the planter turned around. For those of you who have not been out in the corn yet brace yourselves the compaction damage in the end rows is pretty ugly in places.