Taking a Break During Corn Planting

I did get started planting corn Saturday afternoon, and then it started raining about 5PM. My planter is in the shed because all my land is close to home. Most farmers today have land spread out for miles, so when they get rained out the planter stands in the field until the sun shines again. Some farmers have a lot of corn planted while others have not really gotten started.

It was hard to know if we should get going planting corn or wait. The forecast was for rain later on Saturday and then the first part of this week it was supposed to be really cold. With the seed treatments available today and the cold tolerance bred into the corn genetics, many farmers planted corn even though it is early.

Even though it is early, when you have the opportunity to plant corn in good field conditions, you plant. We all remember the past two years when it was a struggle to get corn planted because it was too wet. It would be really frustrating to not plant corn and than look back and wish you had because it is raining every day. Knowing what the weather was going to be the rest of the year would make these decisions a lot easier.