A Near Perfect Crop Year for Jasper County Farmer

Kingma July 4 update

Mark Kingma-12A 4th of July check on crop progress in northwest Indiana has brought some good news from Mark Kingma. He farms in Jasper County and says the crops are looking very good following a spring that allowed him to get planted just about on time. The corn and soybeans have benefited from some good rains recently.

“It’s very scattered but eventually it’s all getting hit by rain. On our river ground we’re actually pumping water off of the fields from rain they’ve had upstream from us. From Valpo to South Bend they had quite a bit of rain last week and the river is still above flood stage, so we’re pumping water off there. But otherwise we cannot complain. Probably 98-99 percent of our crops really look good right now. We’ve been pretty blessed right here.”

Kingma irrigates his fields and last year they couldn’t keep up with the fields’ demands. This year it’s a total turnaround.

“They sure have not even started,” he said. “We’ve moved them out of the way a little bit, but that is it. We have not run an irrigator. I have one neighbor that was running one a little bit on some ground where he only got a couple of tenths of an inch of rain over the last few weeks. But it’s an isolated area. Most everything else has probably had 2 inches over the last 2 weeks. Just really nice rains.”

He tells HAT there are some fields as close as 10 miles away that have had just too much rain. How close is pollination time?

“I would say about a week and we’re going to see the first of our tassels. The first field we planted two days ago I pulled a center out and it’s about 4 leafs so I suspect another 8 or 10 days and we’ll have some tassels going.”

Asked if he had pest issues Kingma said not yet. Hear more in the full field update:Mark Kingma July update

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