Transitioning from lots of rainfall to extreme heat has started impacting some of the crops in Greene County.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Zach Minnihan says because of the late planting season, crops are still behind where they normally should be this time of year. But having this kind of heat has helped corn to move along.

“Especially the corn crop, it’s putting on a new leaf or opening a new leaf every 2.5-3 days. So it’s an old term where you just  can hear the corn growing. I mean that’s where if you blink or drive by a field and it’s twice the size, three times the size as the last time you looked at it sometimes.”     

Minnihan points out that despite all the recent heat, if there’s no rainfall in the upcoming forecast, then heat stress could develop.

“You’ll start to see some of this corn plant, especially start to roll up and basically try to hold on to water retention to when it’s stressed. We needed some heat really on this corn crop and same with the (soy)beans. The beans are just behind in the ground. It was cold and it was wet (during planting season) and kind of just stagnant. We really haven’t even had full sunny days as many as we normally get through April and May. So June, we are definitely catching up on the heat units in June.”    

According to the National Weather Service, Jefferson has surpassed its monthly average of rainfall for June with 4.46 inches and the normal average is 3.46 inches.