A tale of two different planting seasons

Derek Niese – Putnam County

Things are going pretty good on our farm right now. We are probably halfway done with corn and soybean planting, which is pretty far along for this time of year in our area. I cannot complain. It is kind of dry right now, and they are calling for rain and colder weather, so we are just kind of chilling out and seeing what happens.

As far as the drought talk goes, I would say northwest Ohio has improved. We had a lot of water last month, and there are still spots with water lying in the low areas. It is hard to say you are in a drought when water is piled up in those places. But this is northwest Ohio, and we could be dry again in two weeks just like that.

We pretty much no-till all of our corn and soybeans. When we start planting tomatoes in a couple of weeks, we field cultivate ahead of that, but we do not do a lot of heavy tillage, especially in the spring.

We also have two fields of wheat. It is growing and looks about as good as it normally does.

When it comes to planting, we always hope to have corn and soybeans done before tomato season starts, but that does not usually happen. For all of our crops, we typically are not done planting tomatoes until the first week of June, so we still have a little while to go.

Greg Ramsey – Ross County

As of right now, things are exceptionally ahead on our farm. We finished planting corn on April 18, and we have 40 acres of soybeans left to finish today. Once those acres are done, we will be wrapped up with planting. I do not know that we have ever finished planting in April before, but we are taking advantage of the dry weather.

At this point, we are almost hoping for a little shower, but nothing catastrophic. That is always the hesitation when you ask for rain. We need moisture, but you do not want too much of a good thing.

From start to finish, planting season took about two weeks. We do some conventional tillage on our corn ground, so we handled that first. Then we looked around, saw conditions were right, and decided we might as well start. We began with corn, then moved to soybeans a day or two later. It all went really smoothly. I am pretty happy with how things have turned out and could not ask for much better.

Some of our first-planted corn is already up and at least at the two-leaf stage. Most of the rest is just spiking through the ground. I have not found any soybeans out of the ground yet, but I am sure the first ones planted are close. Ground temperatures are warm, so really, it is just a lack of moisture if things are not emerging yet. We have had a couple of tenths of rain here and there, but not enough to make much difference.

Our wheat is looking good as well. I would not say it is necessarily ahead, but without a cold snap here in the near future, it should be off to the races. It may be an early year for wheat, too.

Matt Hartong – Summit County

Right now, we are very wet. I wish somebody would turn the rain off here for a little bit, because we have gotten a ton of rain, and it has made things challenging.

We do a fair bit of tillage, especially dealing with manure and other things we spread throughout the winter. Typically, we chisel a good amount of ground. We have had a few times where we could dance between the raindrops and get a little bit of ground worked, but that is really the name of the game right now. We are just waiting for things to dry off a little bit so we can get our season started.

At this point, we do not have anything planted. Last week, I had a conversation with my dad, and with the most optimistic weather forecast in my brain, I thought maybe we could look at some fields. The first thing we typically like to plant is the silage corn that we end up putting into bags. I thought maybe we could plan on disking and finishing some fields so we could plant.

It feels like the first time I opened my mouth about doing something like that, here came another half-inch or three-quarters of an inch of rain, and that puts everything off.

It is obviously a challenge, but the most important thing is to stay optimistic, maximize the time we do have, and be prepared. Our drill is calibrated, the planter is full of seed, and we are just waiting for that window.

Melissa Clark – Miami County

We actually wrapped up planting season yesterday. This was a super early start for us. We had a really nice stretch of weather the second week of April, and they got the itch, so they wanted to go out and plant the first field around the farm. It went really well. They worked out the issues with the planter and just kept going from there.

The weather stayed really nice and dry. We have probably only gotten three-tenths of an inch of rain in the last two weeks, and that allowed us to keep moving and finish planting. That does not happen every year, so we took advantage of the opportunity while conditions were fit.

Our early-planted fields look really good so far. You can row all of it already, which is always encouraging to see. The crop is off to a nice start, but everything needs a little moisture right now. We were happy to have the dry weather to get the crop in, but now it would be nice to catch a timely rain.

Now we are basically at the point where we need to spray a little bit of corn, check fields, and look at emergence and population counts. It was one of those situations where you do not know when the rain might start and keep you out of the field. We had early plant coverage for crop insurance, and we gambled. So far, it looks like it was the right decision.