by Amanda Kautz

If you’ve felt like this crop year has been flying by faster than normal, you haven’t been imagining it. Temperatures through June were generally above average, and it was a wet spring and summer. This meant corn and soybeans were planted and germinating ahead of the five-year average in most cases, and winter wheat was two to three weeks ahead of average.

The gap has slowly been closing between current crops and the five-year average due to cooler weather during July, but at one point, the amount of corn silking and beans blooming was nearly double the norm. There was a lot of variability in how fields handled these conditions, with some looking worse for the wear after heavy rains and taking longer to become fit for fieldwork during the wettest parts of spring. 

Much of the rain came in heavy storms, instead of slow, gentle rain. Many tilled soils had runoff and ponding. Water could not infiltrate at a fast enough rate, if at all, and when it ran off the field, it took soil with it.

As the soil dried out in fields, it crusted. This crusting caused issues with emergence, especially in corn this year. There were a lot of cases of corkscrewed mesocotyls as corn germinated and got trapped beneath the crusted surface, waiting for the next rain to soften it. This meant uneven emergence and seedling stress. 

Related:What do ‘corkscrewed’ corn mesocotyls tell you?

How soil health helps

In soil health systems, the soil has more aggregates, making it more resilient and able to handle more extreme weather conditions. It generally has higher infiltration and water retention rates, and produces little runoff or ponding. The surface also does not crust easily due to the soil structure being more stable and soil particles staying put instead of detaching under the force of raindrops.

This meant that in 2024, as seedlings were ready to emerge, they were not battling a crusted soil surface. It also meant that when the dry spell hit during June, water was available for crops, and crop stress was prevented.

Because crops were ahead of average, many cornfields were tasseling and soybean fields were blooming during this dry spell. Plants in tilled fields started to show stress quickly due to lack of available soil water. Luckily, this year there was rain in time to save the day, but that’s never a guarantee. If it hadn’t rained at that critical time, it would be a much different outcome in many fields.

The weather also opened opportunities for those with wheat to jump-start building soil health. Wheat was 64% harvested by the first of July, which was double the five-year average. This meant a big window was opened during the summer for either double-crop soybeans or cover crops.

Forgoing double-crop soybeans and instead planting a cover crop mix after wheat can be a great way to add diversity to your crop rotation and help build organic matter and soil structure. It also could provide late summer or early fall forage if you have livestock. 

The weather is one of the least predictable or controllable aspects of farming, and building a more resilient soil is always a good bet against whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at you.

Kautz is the state soil health specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Indiana. She writes on behalf of the Indiana Conservation Partnership.