GALT, Iowa — Stu Swanson got his corn planted and some of his beans in just four days. Then rains came and stopped things for a while.

“Like the Boy Scout motto, you’ve got to be prepared and ready, so when things look good in early April soil conditions were good, it was a little cold but things worked really well,” said Swanson. “We jumped on the planting starting on April 11 and and then we had a 16-day shutdown because of water, it never got real wet, but just enough, which is good for us because we’ve been in D2 and D3 drought here for about three years in a row now.”

The dry early start was what kicked off the planting season, but the water was also welcomed.

“We started planting about April 10 or 11th in North Central Iowa, we went gangbusters for a few days right up until that cold rain,” said Angie Rieck-Hinz, an ISU Extension Agronomist for North Central Iowa. “We got rain Easter Sunday and then we have been out of the field for about two weeks after that. There were places, especially between Highway 175 and Highway 20 that got over 5 inches of rain and really hard pounding rain.”

Rieck-Hinz said that in some cases farmers are making decisions on whether they’re going replant the makers right now.

She said the early start for the corn also means an early start for weeds.

“I think the message would have, is you really probably should be out scouting some fields right now,” said Rieck-Hinz. “We would always recommend that for probably for two reasons number one you’re going to want to look at that plant stand and see if it’s where you really want it. There are people that are making those replant decisions because their stand is, has declined because that crop can’t pop out of the ground due to soil crusting.”

“Weed resistance has been an issue that we deal with so we try to find the right mixes of different chemicals, the right rates,” said Swanson. “Certainly we don’t want to over-apply, but we don’t want to under-apply and maybe as a farmer, we tried to cut too many costs in the past and that led to the resistance issues, so we’re fighting that now.”

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