By Dave Dahl/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The spring of 2015 wrapped up wet for Illinois farmers.
The statewide average last week was about 3.6 inches of rain, much more than that in the South. The typical number would be an inch.
“There are scattered reports of corn tasseling in the central and west-southwest parts of the state,” said Mark Schleusener, the crop statistician for the USDA in Illinois. “It’s moving from vegetative growth stages to reproductive growth and is starting to form kernels and ears.”
The growth is great, says Schleusener, though – belying the lyrical “knee high by the Fourth of July” or that thing about an elephant’s eye – they don’t measure it that way anymore, with quantity and quality of the corn trumping height.
Seventy percent of corn is rated good to excellent.
As for soybeans, about 90 percent has emerged. 60 percent is good to excellent.
