Rain Halts Planting

Crop farming is at a standstill here in northwest Iowa as of May 22. It seems that I have written ‘standstill’ several previous times for this blog. But that is the case as of today.

We had rain Thursday night May 16 and it has rained off and on every since. There has been light rain all day on May 22. There has been some heavy rain in northern Kossuth county. There will be some replanting in that area because of drowned crops.

I would guess that we are about 75% planted on corn and 25% planted on soybean. There are farmers who are done planting both crops. And there a few farmers that a have a decent amount of corn yet to plant.

Much of corn is emerging. We had many concerns about the corn that was planted on April 29 and 30 – because it was greeted by snow and cold after it was planted. The term ‘imbibitional chilling’ nearly became a household term. Some farmers waited to plant until after April 29-30 and some did not. However, so far it all seems to have worked out.

Farmers should check emerged cornfields. Check on the plant populations. Measure out 1/1000th of an acre (17ft 5 in. in 30 in. rows). Plant counts in that distance equals plants per acre.