Soil by the numbers

The growing season can be considered over, and harvest almost so. The Nov. 5 USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service report for Illinois has corn harvest reported at 98 percent complete compared to a five-year average of 77 percent. Soybean harvest is reported at 96 percent complete compared to a five-year average of 87 percent. I see fewer and fewer fields with standing crops in my travels across northern Illinois, even the double crop soybeans planted after wheat harvest in late June or early July appear to have been harvested within the last week. We are getting closer to the end of harvest at the Northern Illinois Agronomy Research Center but are still taking advantage of dry days to collect useful data from the 2012 growing seaso