ROSE HILL, Iowa — The Drought Monitor has been showing southeastern Iowa in a severe drought for several weeks.

Rains this past weekend, are just about a month late according to ISU Extension Crop Specialist  Rebecca Vittetoe.

“The rain that came over the weekend, is probably too late for a lot of the crops,” said Vittetoe. “Just where we are in the growing season, so unfortunately on the corn side and on the bean side that rain came a little bit too late. Most of the soybean fields are starting to turn colors. It’s at that R-7 and R-8 stage once they reach that stage,  where they are done filling.”

On the Michael Jackson Farm northeast of Oskaloosa, the crop season was off to a good start, but just a little late due to wet weather.

“Thinking we’re all off to the races and then it just stopped raining,“ said Jackson. “We haven’t had much rain since well since Fourth of July. The whole month of July was dry. We started getting some rains here again two and a half inches I heard some got four for inches of rain.”

Jackson credits drought-resistant crops with helping to still get decent yields even without much rain. Also, Jackson said he realizes the importance of cover crops into the winter months to help hold moisture in the soil. 

“We’re kind of in a really good spot where we got timely rains,” said Jackson “It wasn’t enough, we’re still 10 inches behind what we need for rainfall. I think we’re on track to get a normal yield, not anything spectacular.”

Jackson said he is hoping the beans will yield 60 bushels to the acre. Some farms within two miles of his place are much drier, so the rains have been very spotty.

“There’s definitely going to see an impact on the yield, rainfall has been so variable throughout the growing season,” said Vittetoe. “You’ll have one spot that got some rain and then you go a mile down the road and they didn’t get any so it’s gonna be very variable and soil types gonna make a big difference this year.”