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Crop Watch

Crops hang in the balance

After we have watched the optimum time period for planting corn in much of the central Iowa float by with excessive rain and cold weather during April and the first half of May the future of this year’s corn and soybean crops as we normally produce them hang in the...

Hybrid Maturity Choices

Now the month of May has arrived and not much has changed weather-wise in the last week or two. Wet and cool conditions existed in the Sacramento area and in the state of Arkansas during the late winter/early spring time frames as harbingers of what we would expect to...

Temp trend risk among crops

May arrives earlier this week, even though the prospect of receiving snow in northern Iowa and in neighboring states over the weekend made it feel like late winter rather than late spring. Luckily the jet stream shifted slightly from its predicted path and snowfall...

Final thoughts for the season

Finally, the skies cleared and spring seems to have made up her mind and decided to stay, instead of letting Old Man Winter back into the Midwest. A week ago parts of SE Iowa and western Illinois picked up as much as five inches of snow. The winds were still from the...

StressTech benefits

Mid-April is here and in most recent years the corn planters in the central and western Iowa have begun running strong across many acres, while the growers in Eastern and Northern parts of the state are revving their engines. This year the pace has been slowed by...

Lots of questions

Except for the forecasted potential for snow and cold weather mid-week it appears that spring and spring like conditions are with us. Currently the rainstorm expected to hit here sits as a wide band of heavy rain in the Pacific NW heading in our direction. A lot can...

Spring is coming

At last spring has arrived, but the warm fuzzy thoughts about springtime and all that goes with it disappeared for many people across western Iowa, eastern Nebraska, much of S Dakota and now northern Missouri as the property and hellish stories about fighting the...

March 14th conference highlights

At last springtime weather has arrived and the nasty, chilling cold temperatures of the disappearing winter are subsiding. Days in the mid 40s will become more common and the last of the eight to ten foot tall snowdrifts will melt away following gravity into the soil...

One month closer to planting

Hello again. We are one week closer to spring. While a week ago the 10 day and 30 day weather forecast was for much cooler weather and a chance of snow, things turned around for us with temps in the low to mid 30s with rain on Saturday. Seeing the snow melt was great...

Tillage concerns

March 1st is here and typically the snow banks are slowly melting away. The hours of sunlight are increasing which should be giving us daily highs in the high 30s. In a few weeks the first early flowers should be pushing thru the snow to display their beautiful...