cropCENTRAL | Field Crop Production Resources

Steve Brand – Commercial Agriculture Specialist 
Stephenson  County 
Soil Conditions: Mildly Dry (soil is drier than normal, plant growth may have slowed) 
Scouting was done in Stephenson County. Overall, the field conditions are very dry with May only bringing 1.1″ across the area so far. Temperatures have been in the upper 70s and low 80s this week with lows in the upper 40s and 50s. There are some potential rain events coming in the next week to add some moisture back into the soil.…

Kathryn Seebruck – Commercial Agriculture Educator
Ogle County
Soil Conditions: Mildly Dry (soil is drier than normal, plant growth may have slowed)
Northwestern Illinois is in the home stretch of planting. I’ve been able to row quite a few corn fields, and beans have been reported as being up and out of the ground or just about. There are few fields that have yet to be planted.
Weeds such as giant ragweed and common lambsquarters are present in fields I’ve been in,…

The final week of April acted much like the rest of the month, with warm and wet weather pretty much statewide. Average temperatures this week ranged from the low 50s in northern Illinois to the mid-60s in southern Illinois, between 3 and 6 degrees above normal. The entire month of April ended around 0.5 degree warmer than normal statewide.

A continued active storm track brought multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms this week. 7-day totals ranged from around a half inch in parts of western Illinois to over 4 inches near the Metro East area.…

You can also read the article in Portuguese and Spanish
The first half of April has been a little cooler than normal, with a very wide range in rainfall totals, from an inch or more below normal in northwestern Illinois to 6-8 inches above normal in south-southeastern Illinois. There is some rain in the forecast over the next week, but some progress in fieldwork and planting is likely. While it’s too early to consider planting in wet soil,…

WILLAg.org is home to University of Illinois Extension radio programming produced in cooperation with Illinois Public Media. It includes daily radio programming from the  8:55am Opening Market Report to the Commodity Market Summary at 4:32pm. These all air on WILL AM580 which can be tuned in across much of the states of Illinois and Indiana. The website, willag.org, hosts much of the programming, too. It also includes a combined Illinois Extension farm news feed from the crop scientists,…

We had a bit of a calmer weather week as we settled into April. Average temperatures this week ranged from the high 30s to the mid-50s, between 2 and 5 degrees below normal. April to date has been 1 to 4 degrees cooler than normal as well, following a top 10 warmest March on record statewide. In fact, last month was the warmest March in Illinois since 2012.

We’ve gotten a better picture of the precipitation and flooding across southern Illinois from last week’s storms.…

You can also read the article in Portuguese and Spanish
The month of March in Illinois was 4-5 degrees warmer and 1-2 inches lower in precipitation than normal. At Champaign, 170 growing degree days (GDD) accumulated in March, and less than 2 inches of rain fell from March 10 through the end of the month. The dry weather had fields in some places dry enough to work and plant around the middle of March,…