Delayed harvest should start this week
Farmland is strangely quiet across North Central Ohio for this time of year, as most corn and soybean crops remain standing rather than being harvested.
“I would say we’re running about two weeks behind,” explained Jason Hartschuh, Ohio State University Extension agent for Crawford County.
There have been three meteorological problems affecting this year’s harvest: many fields were planted late because of a rainy spring, a cooler-thanideal summer kept plants from growing as quickly as farmers had wanted, and recent rains have kept combines from bringing in what few crops are ready.
“All these clouds aren’t helping,” Hartschuh said.
Fortunately for growers, the current forecast predicts sunny skies across the region for the next week, with at least two days of 70 degrees or warmer: Wednesday and Thursday.
Planting started late in 2022
Marty Wesner knew six months ago that harvest might look a little different this year, but even he couldn’t have predicted just how different from normal it would become.
His family plants 2,000 acres in Ashland County every spring. They normally start around April 21, but that date was bumped by a week this year to April 28.
“Once we got to planting, things progressed fairly quickly,” Wesner said.
The extension agent reported over the summer that 25% of fields across the region had to be replanted because they had been drowned by heavy spring rains. Some farmers switched to fastgrowing varieties, but others stuck with their full-season seed and hoped for the best.
Crops need growing degree units for completion
Once seeds germinated and grew, they were met with a slightly cooler summer than anticipated.
Crops require a certain amount of cumulated heat energy throughout a growing season to fully develop, and farmers measure that in growing degree units, or growing degree days.
An online chart created by Purdue University explains that there can be many growing degree days in one calendar day, and that growing degree units are found by calculating how many degrees above a base temperature a given day’s mean temperature reached.
Farmers don’t have to keep track of that because the High Plains Regional Climate Center does it for them — the portal even allows users to sort databases by county and date.
A look at 110-day corn shows that 2,642 degree days are needed for the kernels to develop a black layer that proves their maturity.
The climate center’s website reports that from May 1 to Oct. 2 there were 2,772 growing degree days in Richland County, 2,836 in Wayne County, 2,803 in Ashland County, 2,916 in Crawford County and 2,715 in Holmes County.
Most fields aren’t ready yet, though, because few were fully emerged by May 1.
“We need some more 80 degree
weather,” Hartschuh said. “One week of 80 degrees would push it all along.”
Harvest should get into full swing this week
Combines typically would have begun dotting the countryside in mid-september, but most fields remained unpicked as the extension agent surveyed the region the week the calendar turned to October.
“These should have been ready to harvest last week, but they’ve still got green leaves on them,” Hartschuh said of one field.
Wesner told a similar story from his fields, but he thinks he will start picking the first week of this month.
“We’re not real far off,” Wesner said. “We get three or four days here of sunny weather and we’ll get started on soybeans.”
One of his neighbors had a field that was ready two weeks ago, and they got it picked before the rains that stuck around all last week.
“The way I understand it, they were pretty decent,” Wesner said. “Yields were good and they were dry. They were happy with them.”
He has taken an early look at his crops, and is optimistic for the same results.
“We could have a decent crop,” Wesner said. “Soybeans are always a wild card. They might look really good but you get into them and they might not have as many pods.”
He was glad the rains finally subsided, giving way to sunny skies this week.
“The only fear I have with this wet fall is that I’m starting to see some disease move in,” Wesner said. “What I’ve looked at so far isn’t enough to hurt anything, but if it continues to be this way, it could really affect the quality.”
It looks like the region might get just enough heat in the coming days to finally end the remaining growing season. It’s exactly what farmers were needing.
“Or a frost to kill it, which isn’t what we really want,” Hartschuh said. “But either of those two would finish the crop off. Frost isn’t what we want, but it would get the job done if we aren’t going to have heat again.” ztuggle@gannett.com 419-564-3508
Twitter: @zachtuggle