While Thursday night’s rainfall didn’t come in deluge proportions, it was a godsend for area farmers. WHILE ROW crops are much of most farmers’ minds, cattle also are a large component of local agriculture.
“Just right,” said Nate Clark. “My corn is starting to fill and some of my soybeans are blooming.”
Those are critical stages for whether either crop will produce a good yield at harvest.
Clark’s farm ground, scattered about an area bounded by 1000 and 2200 streets and Oregon and West Virginia roads, has been the recipient of some rains others in the county missed. That’s the way it has been this year — rainfall seldom as come in a broad area.
Thursday night’s was widespread.
“I got .60 of an inch and Carl Bryson’s place (a couple of miles from Clark’s headquarters on Rhode Island Road) got an inch and a quarter,” Clark said.
Elsewhere, rain totals generally were close to or better than an inch.
Dale Daniels, who farms a broad swath south of Humboldt, reported 1.5 inches.
Daniels said the rain would help some of his corn, although leaves on some stalks had curled to the point that tassels hadn’t emerged — not a good thing.
“Some of that corn may have ears, but I don’t know whether they have anything on them,” he said, with shrouded tassels hampering pollination.
Had the widespread rain missed the area, as several productive storms have of late, a few more days would have been too late for moisture to have had much impact, Clark said.
However, he, Daniels and any other farmers asked are realistic in saying one rain doesn’t make a crop.
“We’re going to need another rain before long, within a week or two,” Clark said, recalling a standard statement of Gary Kilgore, legendary K-State agronomist: “In Kansas you’re a couple of weeks from a drought anytime in the summer; a day from a flood.”
Clark put in short-season corn on upland, longer season on river and creek bottoms, and even though all of his corn was planted as much as a month later than he had planned — spring this year was wet — he noted, “It catches up quickly,” and good yields are within the realm of possibility.
Harvest won’t occur as early as last year, though, when prolonged drought took a huge bite out of the area corn yield.
“I was cutting corn on Aug. 18 last year,” Clark said, but figures the crop is three to four weeks behind where it normally would be this year because of late planting, and spotty rainfall. Corn, and soybeans more so, are genetically engineered to withstand adverse weather conditions better than years ago. Both fall into growth holding patterns when weather turns hot and dry, although there is a limit to how long they can wait for rain.
Daniels mentioned that at field edges some soybeans still hadn’t broken through the ground, because of hedgerows and other vegetation had sapped moisture they required for germination. Those further into fields have grown to the point available moisture permitted and will have another spurt with the latest rain.
Short soybeans can bloom and put on pods, but yields are affected — sometimes substantially — when vines don’t have robust growth.
Weather conditions other than rainfall also are on a grain farmer’s mind.
The forecast is for mild temperatures through most of next week and a possibly of more rain, Clark noted, pointing out that ground stays moisture longer when temperatures don’t soar near or above triple digits.
Closer nights, which had been the rule this summer, also help, Daniels said.
“When it has moisture, corn grows a lot during the night when it cools off,” he said, recalling that last year, when drought was a bane of great proportions, temperatures didn’t cool much after dark.
“I remember getting up at 3 a.m. and it still would be 85, 86 degrees,” he said.
The rain perked up pasture grass, some of which had gone dormant, and added a smidgen to stock water, which to this point hadn’t become a problem.
“It (pond water) has been going down,” but not nearly as much as a year ago, Daniels said.
Temperatures in the mid-90s, common of late, evaporate water standing open in pastures, but not as quickly as last summer’s 100-plus days.
The hay harvest also has been better this year, a result of the wet spring.
“I put up hay this week,” Daniels said, without significant drop-off in quality from that baled earlier.
While appreciative of Thursday night’s rain, Clark and Daniels were in tune in remarking that the moisture would last only so long and that another shower within a few days would be the cat’s meow.
ON THE BRINK Crops reliant on weather for success, failure
