Most major crops are now planted or nearly finished in the Carolinas. Bayer Crop Science technical agronomist Zach Webb says corn is all but done and is in good condition.

“Corn actually looks pretty good out there. We’ve had some, some timely rainbows and corn has really, really taken off. We’ve got some pretty good size going out there, even the late planting stuff, all the corn crops (are) in pretty good shape right now.”

Cotton has been a bit more problematic particularly in South Carolina.

“I’ve got cotton that’s in the two true leaf stage now. Cotton planting has been a little bit sporadic in some areas. We had too much water down south, and as we moved north it’s been extremely dry and guys are trying to decide to do a dust it in, do I chase the moisture. We we had a little bit of everything going on. We finally caught rain now. And so we’re putting a lot of cotton in the ground now, and the cotton that’s out there is up and growing and looks extremely good.”

Webb says soybean planting in the Carolinas has been a tale of two cities.

“The early stuff, the indeterminates, most of that stuff’s already in the ground, up and growing, and we’re getting to the stage now where guys are switching over to the more determinate varieties, the later maturing stuff, and they’re starting to think about the double-crop beans. And the double-crop beans obviously won’t go into June. But I would say overall, we’re probably 60% planted on soybeans I’m guessing, and that’s a hard number to come up with because of the variability from Virginia to the South Carolina market that I cover, everything along there. It’s kind of hard to put a hard number on it.”

Most planters in North and South Carolina have been able to take advantage of favorable conditions, and planting of most crops is ahead of the five-year average.

“The tobacco crop looks pretty good right now. Most of the tobacco’s in the ground, Guys are setting tobacco right now. But we did have a few spots of hail last week on Friday afternoon near me, that roughed up some of the tobacco and some of the corn as well in Wilson County, Greene County caught some hail last week. The vegetable crops, most of those aren’t going in the ground yet. Peanuts are in the ground. Most guys have got their peanuts in the ground. There might still be a few going in but typically, peanuts are already ground. Some of them already up. They can plant the peanuts a little earlier than the cotton, so most guys who are growing cotton are growing peanuts, so they started with peanuts. Then they put in the cotton.”