Ohio farmers report good crop conditions as summer begins

Derek Niese – Putnam County

Things have been going well the last couple of weeks. I have been busy. The corn is all side-dressed, we started picking the black and red raspberries last week, and I have been side-dressing tomatoes and laying drip tape. We have been doing a little bit of everything.

Overnight, we received anywhere from seven-tenths to an inch of rain, and we needed it. It was time for some rain around here.

Overall, everything looks like it is growing really well. I cannot complain. It is kind of funny because we have corn that is only to the middle of my calf, and we have corn that is head high already. It just shows the difference in everything this year, but that is the spring we were given, so that is how it’s turned out.

We have a field of wheat, and it looks like it could be a little early, but it will probably be right on time like normal.

Greg Ramsey – Ross County

We are still on the dry side, but we have been getting just enough rain to keep things going and keep things looking healthy.

We started wheat harvest last week and worked on that all weekend. We are about halfway through harvest. Yields are fairly average. I think we are a little better off than some in our area. It sounds like the frost caused some damage to other folks.

The quality of the wheat we have harvested so far has been excellent. There have been no issues, and the guys at the elevator have been happy with what they are receiving. If it can stay dry for a few more days, we should be able to wrap up wheat harvest.

The rains have been really spotty. We had one rain that split the farm in half. The side where we were harvesting wheat did not get a drop, but the other side of the road got a couple of tenths in a pretty short amount of time.

We have been doing some post applications on soybeans to get the fields cleaned up. The biggest concern so far has been some breakthrough weeds, especially marestail, which has been a problem again this year.

For now, we are keeping an eye on what comes next and will start looking at fungicide timings and those kinds of things.

Matt Hartong – Summit County

We finally finished planting last week, so all of the corn is in, and things are going pretty well. Everything wrapped up nice and neat. We are certainly happy to be done planting. After such a long, wet spring, it is a huge relief.

We received a little bit of rain, and I think we needed it, so we are happy about that.

Because we had such a wet spring, our hay season has looked a little different than normal. We actually mowed some hay really early, before we started planting any corn. We probably mowed about 30 or 40 acres before planting, so our hay crop is kind of split into two. We made some second-cutting alfalfa about a week ago, and we are looking at getting the other half of that second crop ready by the end of next week.

We have been out doing a little scouting, and there are a couple of spots with wetter conditions where we planted earlier that we probably were trying to get in a little sooner than we should have, and the corn is a little thin in some spots.

For the most part, the stands all look really good, and we are excited to see how everything turns out this season.

Melissa Clark – Miami County

We received about half an inch of rain last night, and overall, our crops look good. The corn and soybeans seem to have been a little further behind than we expected at this point, but they have come out of that a little bit. We have several chances of rain over the next week, and then they’re forecasting a dry spell, so we are hoping to get out and post-spray soybeans.

We were able to finish side-dressing, and it went well. We also had drones come in to do an aerial application on the corn, and that worked out really well, especially given how wet we were at the end of May and early June.

Our corn is definitely knee high by the Fourth of July. I would say it was knee-high by the fourth of June in most places, but it does feel like it’s been taller in the past. I don’t know if everything is just stunted because of the weather we’ve had. It still looks great; it’s just a little further behind than we expected.

It will be interesting to see how everything plays out this season, especially after such a weird spring.