Field failure?

Now there is a scary phrase! Had to consult Hank Kimball (county agent for the unsophisticated among us) this week for a little advice. He was all apologies about how hard it is to get in touch with him. Says he is going from farm to farm looking at fields because the hard rain two weeks ago, followed by snow and frost, had killed off entire fields. Got me to thinking about the big guy who used to rent my place and still rents the 100 acres across the road and the 50 acres next door. He was out there right before that big rain with his planter. Sure enough...nothing coming up in those fields that I can find. I haven't even seen him come by to walk it and look.

Now the reason I was consulting with Hank was because I decided last year that I would either have a good reliable planter in 2016...or not plant. Constant breakdowns, half the seed not planted...no more of that nonsense. So I spent a LOT of time this Spring working on the JD planter I bought last summer but now here I am end of May and still planting corn. Almost done and thanking the Lord I was not able to get out there sooner. Hank and the elevator both tell me the short season variety will come out fine AND the JD 7000 just hums along planting seed...nice planter! Just saying, though...that "field failure" comment is going to be in my head every Spring from here out.

The field just to the south of me belongs to the big dairy. They planted corn down there three weeks ago. We had that real warm .35 inch of rain overnight and I could see it was up for the first time this morning when I went out to check cows.

Planted corn May 8th, it's up and doing fine ,but so are the weeds. We will get them weeds a drink next week, see how happy that makes em.

Started planting here April 24th (between Milwaukee and Madison WI) into dry conditions. Took 3 weeks to come up, just in time to freeze. And today it looks great. A complete failure is rare. A stand reduction is never desirable, but can still yield well.

I wonder if maybe these fields will still come up then? I don't know how they feel about it because I know they carry crop insurance. Me? I would be a little nervous.

Dave, I'm just a few miles northwest of you and we had some corn in when that hard rain hit. Most of it is doing okay but the one field that I was worried about when I saw how hard it was raining is pretty thin but when you start digging around you can find little sprouts still trying to break through the crust......see a few more busting through every day .....so we are going to wait a few more days to see what happens........

Thousands of acres of mid-April planted corn was re-planted in my part of NW Iowa. Cold wet weather was the culprit. Most of the replanting is in patches throughout the fields but some entire fields were torn up and re done. I had to tear up a 60 acre field that was planted April 17 into good low black soil. It also was COLD black soil. I replanted May 21st. The last corn I planted for the first time was a couple of weeks ago and that corn came up with as near perfect picket fence stand as a person will ever see. Another 100 acre field on higher lighter soil was planted April 16 and came up with a 90-95 percent stand. Every year since different for sure. A close neighbor of mine couldn't get started planting early because his near new computerized tractor was giving him fits. It was the best thing that could have happened for him.

I guess I don't know what is considered short season corn, but we plant 110 day corn and it always does fine. My grandpa used to like to plant his garden as soon as it got nice out. He must have enjoyed it a lot as he usually had to replant it 3 times or so before everything made it.

Ross

95-105 day corn is normal around here.

My cousin planted corn early, we got a cool spell and rain, he replanted 10-15 acres of peat ground he said only 7-10,000 plants an acre were coming up.

It rained and turned even colder then the first 1/3 of May, so he got seed to replant it a third time. Don't think he's gotten in the field yet, been too wet.

A neighbor has his corn planter parked at his landlords place, waiting for it to dry out enough to replant perhaps 1/3 of that farm, lots of oozing wet spots on it, can't see the corn.

Most of is had a bit to a lot of corn froze off to a brown mush in the teens of May, got to 28 degrees for 4 hours or more. But if it wasn't flooded in water, the corn has come back from that pretty good.

It is the combo of saturated wet ground and a bit too cold that puts it under here.

Paul

My buddy east of here has corn up that he planted April 26th, on sandy soils. His neighbor stopped by after rotary hoeing some they had put on heavier fields around the same time, spoke of another neighbor who is looking at over 500 acres to replant- at over $100/A just for the seed...