The weather is warming and the tractors are chugging away as Iowa farmers are starting the planting season.
Angie Rieck Hinz, a field agronomist with the Iowa State University Extension, says she’s seeing plenty of activity this week in the northern part of the state.
“We still have anhydrous going on, we still have some dry fertilizer applications,” Reick Hinz says. “There’s a lot of spring tillage going on, and there’s even people planting, so I think we’re running the whole gamut right now of spring field operations.”
Forecasters say much of the state will see high temperatures this weekend in the 70s and 80s. That’s some 20 degrees warmer than normal.
“It looks like, over the course of at least the next week or so, we have some scattered chances of some showers,” she says. “I don’t think anybody’s going to turn away the rain. We are still dry. We’re still experiencing some drought conditions, and it’s going to take a long time for that to actually go away.”
The new map released Thursday by the Iowa Drought Monitor shows slight improvements in all categories, though there’s still a big splotch of red in northeast and east-central Iowa — as 32-percent of the state remains under severe or extreme drought. Rieck Hinz says, as always, rain will be key in the success of this next crop.
“We need to have water in that soil profile, and our upper six inches to 12 inches has some decent moisture right now, but you get below about that top foot, it gets fairly dry,” she says. “As our crops grow and roots go down, they’re going to be looking for that water. We’re going to need some timely rains throughout this growing season.”
The short-term forecast calls for rain late Monday and much of Tuesday.
(By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)