While a large portion of Iowa may see thunderstorms or blizzard conditions today, farmers across the state are still preparing for the planting season ahead, as tomorrow’s the first day of spring.
Angie Rieck-Hinz, a field agronomist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, says farmers will need to take a close look at their soil before starting to work.
“There was a lot of fall tillage done. We may not need to come in and do any spring tillage this year, but in some cases, we may need to come out and make a finishing pass,” Rieck-Hinz says. “We need to think about what those soil conditions are at the time we do that. We don’t want it too wet. We just ball everything up, and then we have big clumps out in the field, and then our planter does not work efficiently.”
The amount of rain and snow we receive will also play a big role in how quickly farmers can get into the fields.
“When we come back to plant, we also want good conditions, right?” Rieck-Hinz says. “We don’t want excessively wet, that maybe we’re compacting those side walls when we run that planter through, that we have germination issues. We have rooting depth issues over the course of the season.”
Rieck-Hinz recommends farmers use their favorite search engine to type in “digital ag planters at Iowa State” if they could use a few more tips.
“You will come up with a web page that will give you a bunch of videos for planter resources,” she says. “There’s a little picture of a planter and you can click on that. It will take you to a whole bunch of videos on planter metrics for crop scouting, using blocks to check your planter depth settings, and then studying planter downforce, so all the things we can do in advance of planting that we can actually do right in our shop.”
Rieck-Hinz covers several counties in north-central Iowa, including Wright, Franklin, Hardin and Cerro Gordo.
(By Brian Fancher, KLMJ, Hampton)