MONTEZUMA, Iowa – Soybean planting is 40 percent complete statewide, but some farmers are just getting started.
Last Thursday was cold and windy near the town of Montezuma in Powesheik County in central Iowa. Farmer Kevin Rempp was offloading some of last year’s soybeans, but was still waiting to start planting this year’s beans.
But even if the sun had come out last Thursday, Rempp said that alone would not have been a signal to start planting.
“Just because you’ve got a nice sunny day,” said Rempp, “we had an inch and and quarter of rain here over the last weekend, and we just haven’t had any drying days the last two or three days.”
Rempp said that means it’s taken twice as long to get back into the field as normal; on Thursday he estimated soybean planting progress in the nearby area between 30 and 50 percent complete. He said the weather simply hasn’t been cooperating.
“It’s been wet, but it’s been cold,” Rempp explained. “A lot of the plant that was planted early isn’t coming out of the ground any sooner than what some of ours is.”
Rempp said his corn is doing well; it’s just that the weather delayed planting progress.
“Once we got into the field, we made great progress,” recounted Rempp. “I mean, I think we planted everything in five days. We had a great week last week, but like I say, we were about two weeks late getting in. The corn we did plant last week some of it was emerging out of the ground in seven or eight days. So, I mean, it’s looking good.”
Rempp says a narrow planting window can, in a sense, be widened, thanks to modern farm technology like GPS and auto-steer.
“You can run well into the night,” said Rempp. “You’re tired but you may not be as totally fatigued. I know some people that end up planting almost around the clock. We didn’t, but we put in a lot of long hours.”
That was last Thursday. On Monday, Rempp said the weekend weather turned out to be a little friendlier; he was able to wrap up application of pre-emergent herbicide on his corn crop and by Monday had moved on to soybeans. He added that other farmers in the area were also taking advantage of the planting window.
To hear more about Kevin Rempp’s planting experiences this spring, click here.
