When I get overwhelmed with too much work that needs to be done all at the same time, my wife will often ask me this question: “If time could just stand still, how long would it take you to catch up on everything you need to get done?” I think about this during harvest season. What if I could make time stand still? I could just work and work for hundreds of hours straight and get it all done.

My question to you today is, “What about planting season?” What could you do if you had days or even weeks of extra TIME?”

Brian and I have been working with our team to find a way to do just that – create more TIME at planting – for years. A couple of seasons ago, we released Hefty Brand 40 Series Corn. After all the testing and great success, we wanted everyone to have a chance to literally create TIME during planting season.

Our crop insurance date for corn is April 10 where we farm. This year, the first day the soil conditions were fit to plant was April 12. We planted corn on the 12th and 13th when hardly anyone in our area was planting this season. In fact, other seed companies were actively telling their customers NOT to plant. Those companies encouraged farmers to wait a week or two until it was warmer. The result was we were DONE with planting when others were just getting going. We had much more TIME to do other things, like applying fertilizer and herbicides, when others were still planting.

It’s easy to do a side-by-side to compare yield from one company to another. We welcome that with any Hefty Brand Corn product. However, I encourage you to look at things differently to get the real story. We planted April 12 and 13 successfully. Our stands are nearly perfect. Compare THAT to the other brands and the LAST DAYS OF PLANTING on those fields. By waiting to plant and missing the first days or weeks of planting, many farmers planted into late May in our area. Some didn’t finish until early June. How much did a four- or six-week head start benefit the 40 Series Corn? We’ll see at harvest time, but it could be 50 bushels better, maybe more. Compare the first two days of TIME that 40 Series Corn gave you to the last two days of planting.

Why did other companies recommend waiting to plant? Could you plant their products that early and have success too? In reality, not everyone waited to plant the other corn products, so those recommendations and seed products were tested in the field. This year, some companies had a record number of replants due to failure in cold soils. We had zero replants due to cold soils with Hefty Brand 40 Series Corn again this year. The difference is the combination of the cold germination percentage and the seed treatment package on Hefty Corn. Yes, we put the same seed treatment package on all our corn, but only the very best cold germination tested seed makes the grade to be called 40 Series Corn.