(Radio Iowa) – Green sprouts from the corn and soybeans Iowa farmers planted in mid-April are starting to emerge from the soil, but many farmers are still waiting to get their crops planted. Angie Rieck Hinz, an agronomist for the Iowa State University Extension in north-central Iowa, says planting started around April 10th and continued “going gangbusters” for a little over a week. “Ever since then, it’s been raining or drizzling in some cases, where we haven’t got a lot rain, but we’re not getting a lot of soil drying out,” she says, “so it’s been very difficult for people to get back in the fields since April 19th.” Rieck Hinz says the U-S-D-A crop report that came out earlier this week may not be telling the full story.

“The North Central Crop Reporting District shows us at about 23% of the corn planted and 11% of the beans, compared to statewide where we have 34% of the corn and 25% of the beans planted,” she says. “I think most people would tell you those numbers seem pretty low, that there’s actually a higher percentage of corn and beans planted.” Rieck Hinz offered a bit of advice to farmers who are anxious to get their planting work completed. “We have a lot of time to get crop in the ground once it dries out,” she says. “We’re supposed to go into a hot, dry period starting the end of next week, so I think once we get dried out, we’ll be back in the field relatively quickly and we’ll finish up planting for this season.”

Farmers need to be patient and wait for conditions to be right for planting, she says, otherwise seeds won’t be at the right depth and won’t root well. Rieck Hinz says yields last year were just as good for the early-planted crops as for those that were planted later.