How are your crops looking? (farmers, wheat, acre, house)

[601halfdozen0theother]

This year is looking kind of scary in the midwest because it's so dry. Our corn is doing ok because it rooted well, but the soybeans are in bad shape. (This is central Iowa.) And met some folks this weekend from Illinois who say their bean crop is doing badly, and a couple from Michigan who told about the cherry crop being destroyed this year due to climate.

How are the crops in your region?

[tigre79]

Been kinda cool and wet here, but my garden's coming up just fine. Just planted out a couple of weekends ago. I've got brassicas, peas, greens, leeks, celery, and potatoes outside, and tomatoes, peppers, and herbs in the greenhouse and everything seems pretty happy. The closest farming area is a couple hours north, and they have much different weather than we do, but it seems like it's been pretty nice up that way so far.

[redwolf fan]

Very dry here in Arkansas.

At my former dairy farm in Minnesota, the son says the drought that lasted from August til spring ended last month and crops look good.

[AK-Cathy]

Ditto Tigre here in Anchorage. Plus our apples and cherries are full of blooms, as are the raspberries and currants. Our Kansas property according to my sister is getting decent rainfall and it's not too hot yet but my mother in NW Kansas had alternating hot days and an overnight frost last week that got some of her tomatoes. Sounds like another weird weather year and the drought that eastern/central TX, OK and KS had last summer my have moved to the north and east this year.

[sirron]

We lost all of our watermelon plants here. Had a lot of rain the last couple of weeks, including some strong thunderstorms. The cukes, tomatoes, onions and peppers are doing well, as are the weeds!

We are in north-central Pennsylvania.

[Stubblejumper]

Things are looking fairly good up here, after a couple of extremely wet years. Still a little bit of issues with high water for some people, though I'm pretty high and dry myself.

I've just got hay to cut, and all looks pretty good - I've heard talk from some of the canola producers that there's issues with spraying this year as it's been pretty windy and now there's a bit of an issue with some beetle or other. Not sure how much is just general bitching and how much is genuine problems though.

[sunsprit]

Here in SE WY, Panhandle NE, & NW CO ... where folk have adequate irrigation water available, alfalfa is doing OK. But dryland wheat is headed out on a lot of fields not higher than 6" tall, probably won't be combined as the seed heads are not filling out.

I flew last Saturday over the region to check out who was cutting already, and found that a lot of pivots weren't run this year. Other than those farmers who exchanged their irrigation right water to sell to the fracking companies this year, it looks like a lot of people didn't have enough water to run all of their irrigation systems and natural moisture wasn't adequate for dryland crops on their land. For example, one local farmer has 9 sections under pivots and only 3 of them were fully irrigated, 2 were just 1/2 irrigated, and the rest were alfalfa that looked burned out.

Dryland corn and sunflowers looked very stunted, not doing well.

Regionally, it looks like hay production this year will be in very short supply.

I visited with my local ag spray operator this week, and he said that his business was off by 60% this year. Many area farmers aren't spraying much acreage this year because there's nothing there to spray. Not a good sign for all the various crops in the area.

In an average year, I need to trim up the native grasses that grow by my pasture fences to keep them exposed for livestock control, or trim up my equipment yard to have access there. This year, I haven't had to run a mower anywhere on our place. Neighbors with dryland that depend upon having some forage for their horses are already having to bring in hay because their native grass fields are barren this year; even the weeds aren't growing.

[Bydand]

Veggies look decent, most tree fruits have been hit HARD and it looks like it is going to be a miserable year here for them. The super warm temps in March brought out all the apple, apricot, cherry, peach, nectarine, pear, etc... blossoms; then April turned cold and we had several hard frosts which wiped out all the blossoms and fruit that had set already.

[StealthRabbit]

Tho I'm from the parched areas of CO (where wildfires are now EVEN IN JUNE )

Currently I'm in SW WA and my fields (grass) is over 6ft high. Good for haylage, but tough to get dry enough to bale and store. We have ony had 3 days in a row of dry weather at most. Sunny today, (76f) raining again tomorrow. Garden is stunted except for plants living under 'milk jug'atriums'.

We have been quite warm and wet last few yrs, so a major issue with healthy and hearty bugs. (and moss / algae)

GREAT fruit set (if 'scab' doesn't destroy the quality). My Blueberries are already HUGE (marble sized GREEN and 6 weeks to go). The birds will be impressed.

Rhubarb will be ready for 4th harvest this evening.

[redwolf fan]

Hope the alfalfa crop in Canada does well.

There is a tested hay auction in Sauk Centre MN that attracts a lot of Canadian alfalfa farmers.

One time there was 180 loads auctioned off and over 30% were fromCanada.

With Stearns County MN being the #1 dairy county in MN, there is a strong demand for high quality alfalfa hay.