April 10 is the first crop insurance planting date for corn in my area. May 25 is the last date for full crop insurance on corn here.

That’s 46 days. It sounds like enough to plant your corn, but consider this:

  • Since I want to plant soybeans timely and do a whole bunch of other jobs on the farm, I’d really like to have the corn planted by May 5. That means instead of 46 days, I’m now down to 26 days.

  • On average, it’s going to rain about five days in that time, so now I’m down to 21 days.

  • After each of those five rains, since it’s cold here in April and early May, we probably lose two days each time just waiting for the soil to dry out. Now we’re down to 11 days to plant all the corn.

  • If there’s a breakdown, a family event, or something else that comes up, we probably lose another day or two, putting us at just 9 or 10 days to plant, and on our farm we will have over 2000 acres of corn this year.

I didn’t run through this whole list to stress you out or heap more pressure on you. One of the great things our dad always did was push us to think about the ending date rather than the beginning date. What I mean by that is when we would go through every job we had to do on the farm, how long it would take, and what was holding us back from reaching our target for an end date for planting, spraying, harvesting, or anything else, we were forced to evaluate our situation in more detail. Do we have enough equipment and labor to get the job done timely? If so, that’s awesome. If not, we had to look at either figuring out a way to start earlier, getting more or different equipment, or getting more help.

The cheapest option and often the best option was always starting earlier. For example…

SPRAYING PRE-EMERGE HERBICIDES SUPER EARLY

We started experimenting with fall spraying and early spring spraying almost 30 years ago. They both work great. If you spray right before freeze-up in the fall or in the spring on mornings when the ground is firm/frozen yet thawing in the afternoons, you have much more time to catch a rain (or snow) before your weeds germinate. This has led to better weed control.

Keep in mind, herbicides break down due to weeds using them up, bacterial activity, or photo-degradation (sunlight). Since it’s cold, the weeds and bacteria aren’t a factor, and almost all the herbicides you can spray pre-emerge will sit there for weeks on end with sunlight barely impacting them. You may have never sprayed a pre in early April before, but we encourage you to at least try it on a few acres. It really spreads your workload and improves effectiveness of most herbicides.

SPREADING FERTILIZER EARLY

You will almost certainly start to lose urea within 48 hours if it is not stabilized, rained in, or tilled in. However, most other fertilizer products can be spread early. We spread a bunch of ammonium sulfate (AMS) in March this year. We also applied MAP, potash, sodium molybdate (to get our molybdenum levels up), and other fertilizer products. Our only caution for you with herbicides and fertilizers is not to spread them far in advance of planting in areas that may flood. We avoid our river bottom soils with fall and early spring applications, but if we can hit the other 90 percent of our acres, that leaves us with only a little bit of extra work left to do around planting time. There has been a big trend in our industry where all fertilizer applications are held off until late spring or even summertime, but since phosphorus, zinc, copper, and many other nutrients are virtually immobile in soils, they can definitely be spread far before planting.

PLANTING EARLY

Speaking of planting, let’s go back to the 9 or 10 days we have to get the corn in the ground on our farm, and that’s if we start April 10. In the last few years, we’ve heard many seed dealers telling their customers not to plant because the soil is too cold. That should throw up an enormous red flag if you ever hear that. To me, that says, “My seed has a poor germination score,” or, “My seed has poor vigor.” Run, don’t walk, away from that seed. Corn can and should be planted starting on your first crop insurance planting date if your soil is dry. Over the last 10+ years, we’ve been working on developing corn seed that will be amazing when planted in very cold conditions. 40 Series Corn is now on an incredible amount of acres and growing, because 40 Series Corn can handle your super-cold early-spring soils. While I wish we had 60-degree soil temps on April 10 when we hit our first planting date, 40 is more the norm. Even if the soil temp is 50 or 60 at any time in April around here, we all know it’s going back to 40 overnight from time to time each spring.

If you are able to plant early, that frees up so much time for all the other jobs on your farm. 40 Series Corn gives you what no other seed can – MORE TIME.