By Natalie Hoidal & Marissa Schuh
It's been hot - remarkably so. Crops are responding accordingly with slow fruit production and aborted flowers. Most of the state should get some rain tomorrow, but in some cases it may be too much rain at once, leading to splitting. Powdery mildew and corn earworm are showing up on schedule.
How does this growing season compare?
The USDA tracks crop progress in a variety of commodity crops. Overall, commodity crops appear to be doing really well this year. And yet, it feels like everything is chugging along just a little bit more slowly this year. The tomatoes (in fields) have been producing, but have been slow to really put on a lot of fruit. We’re seeing cucumbers with hundreds of flowers, but only a handful of fruit. We don’t really have concrete data to support this observation, it’s just what we’re seeing as we visit farms.
When we look at data from around the state, we can see that in southern MN (based on Waseca data), we are just a little bit ahead in terms of growing degree days (basically - units of accumulated heat that drive plant and insect growth), and pretty much on par with cumulative precipitation. In theory that should mean our produce should be on track, even a little ahead of schedule.
Source : umn.edu