Well, we planted on April 14 and 15. Turns out the weatherman gave us a bit of bad information a few days prior. The forecast turned back cold and has pretty much stayed there. Nights have been in the thirties, flirting with freezing. This morning there was a good bit of frost.

Fortunately, it hasn’t been overly wet. We had maybe four to six tenths over this timespan. (Most of it came just in time to mess up the kids’ softball schedule.) We dug a little Tuesday. The 180 acres of beans we planted will probably be ok. They sprouted and are just growing very slowly. They will pop out of the ground once it warms up.

Though soil is fit, and some farmers have continued planting, we continue with odds and ends. Even though it may not have been warm enough, we were still successful spraying some fields. We strip tilled a few fields. We ran around chasing some small trouble spots on the soil tests with the correct nutrients to fix the problem. We swept a couple of grain bins. We fixed some drain tile. We hired a crew to cut down some overgrown fence rows. We followed them and did the clean up and applied stump killer. Kind of a potpourri this last ten days. We also made it to a lot of soccer, softball, and golf.

After a couple failed attempts, I think we finally have the corn planter fully tested and ready to go. The service tech was back again today. Though the forecast is finally showing a warming trend, we are going to leave the corn planter sit until Monday. The soil just isn’t warm enough for our liking (or corn isn’t forgiving enough). Saturated cold seed test scores also left a bit to be desired this year. We would hate to plant a bunch of corn and get a cold rain. So, instead we will start back on soybeans Thursday. Planting beans early seems to work out more often than not.

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.