Eastern Idaho looking good for water, crops

Despite mid-winter concerns, Idaho growers are concern-free this season when it comes to moisture.

“We have no worries on moisture this year,” said Phil Nolte, the Idaho Extension seed potato specialist for eastern Idaho. “We had really good snowpack this year. Compared to what we were potentially facing in the middle of winter, things have cleared up considerably and are going in a favorable direction.”

For the last week of May, producers in Idaho saw moisture fall across most of the state with Fenn receiving the most at .37 of an inch. Fenn has received the most moisture since the start of the year and is 10.53 inches above normal.

“The reservoirs are filling up and over here they’ve had to run a lot of water down to make room for what is coming now,” said Nolte.

“From what I’m seeing, the spring plantings are starting to poke through but the potatoes are not up yet,” he said.

“In our area we don’t have the length of growing season for many crops so we are mostly cereals and potatoes,” said Nolte.

Potatoes are 98 percent planted across the state and 27 percent emerged. Last year at this time, 93 percent of the potatoes were in the ground and 27 percent had emerged. Over the past five years the average is 92 percent planted and 18 percent emerged.

“The eastern production region of Idaho is where most of the seed potato production is located because of the higher elevation,” said Nolte. “We are the largest potato seed predicting state in the U.S. by a fairly wide margin.”

While seed production is heavy in the eastern region, Nolte travels the state to help producers with their seed-related problems in potato production.