Wet Soil Planting Delay? Too Soon To Tell
Wet Soil Planting Delay? Too Soon To Tell
Trent Brandenburg is not happy about the prospect of “a couple more inches” of rain this week. The soil is already too wet to work, he noted, but there is no standing water. “If it warms up, it will dry out fast,” he observed. So “it’s too soon to tell.” Trent does not expect to plant anything before April tenth “at the earliest.”
Trent sees “corn is more favorable” in prospects for crop revenue return, but he has already committed his fertilizer and crop protection inputs for his previous balance of corn and soybeans. He thinks it’s too difficult to change now. The increase of sunny days will improve his optimism. He looks forward to the spring planting and the annual miracle of the emerging seedlings as far as one can see here on the rich Illinois prairie.
More from The Field Report
Wild And Windy Winter Weekend
Trent Brandenburg and family endured a near miss yesterday as a tornado touched down a few miles from their home place. Tornadoes are a rare occurrence in December, but a "bomb cyclone" ripped through central Illinois yesterday. Houses were unroofed [...]
Dry Weather Speeds Harvest
Trent Brandenburg is trying to get his field work done "before it rains". Much of the area Trent farms is in "extreme drought" according to the Illinois Drought Monitor https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?IL map, which is updated every Thursday. The very dry soil [...]
In a Drought, but Corn is Too Wet to Harvest
The current Illinois drought map (11 September) shows severe drought in the northern 40% of Piatt County and moderate drought in the rest of Piatt and adjacent areas of neighboring counties. Trent Brandenburg has barely started harvesting because his corn [...]