Farm Progress

After some tune-up work, both planters are rolling.

Kyle Stackhouse 2

April 25, 2017

2 Min Read

Farmers in northern Indiana are making various decisions this week. Some are planting, some applying ammonia or other fertilizers, some spraying, while others are working ground level and leaving it lay, presumably to plant into a ‘stale’ seedbed at a later time.

Yet, there are still pockets that are too wet to do anything. We were fortunate and missed the bulk of the rains last week. A brief cool off Friday and Saturday has again yielded to above normal temps. When I checked early last week, the soil was 60 degrees.

Fixing planter bugs
As usual, it took a day to get the bugs out of the planters. However now they are both rolling through fields. We remain at a cautious pace, as we are still at the front end of our typical start window. We started to plant corn and soybeans on the 19th. It was a bit of a surprise Sunday that my sweetcorn, which was planted on the 15th of April, was spiking. That was only eight days for notoriously weak seed! Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have sweet corn by the Fourth of July.

There is a wet forecast coming at the end of this week. Decisions will still have to be made regarding how hard to push. A warm wet is completely different from a cold wet, but nobody likes to see a bunch of rain on anything, much less, something that was just planted.

Last night, after a revised wetter forecast, we were contemplating shutting down today and taking a wait and see approach. In the past, fields that were planted 24 hours before a duck drowner fared much better than those planted right up to the rain. Rain is slated begin Wednesday evening.

If we shut down, it would be a first.

We have nearly completed burndown chemical applications. Hopefully we will have a chance to tackle some of the ruts left from last falls’ harvest before it rains this week. It would be nice to get them leveled up and broken open so they stop holding water. Limited freeze/thaw this winter didn’t help us out any.

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

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