Despite major snowfalls this winter, planting is ahead of schedule across South Dakota.
As of May 14, the USDA reported corn in South Dakota was 49 percent planted compared to 28 percent last year. 29 percent of soybeans were planted compared to 14 percent last year.
Both spring wheat and oats were 84 percent planted. Sorghum was 12 percent planted.
At Jeff Thompson’s operation near Colton, South Dakota, planting season started early this month and is wrapping up quickly.
“Everybody was worried about how it was going to start out as with the amount of snow that we had this past winter, but the snow melted into the ground, replenished some of our sub soils pretty decent and soil has warmed up and we have hit the ground running,” Thompson said.
But there were no mud issues because the fall season was so dry.
“Everybody pretty much went through fields pretty well, you know, we went into the fall so dry, which helped,” Thompson said. “If we would’ve went in wet, it would have been a totally different story, but going into winter dry, having that much snow set us up pretty decent.”
Subsoil moisture is crucial for this growing season.
“Last year we went in really short in the sub soil, so we are sitting better on the sub soil than we were last year, but we still need some pretty timely rains,” Thompson said. “April didn’t bring us many showers and I got 80 hundreds this last week and not much in the forecast for May yet.”
However, planting season got off to a drier start in Armour, South Dakota.
“The ground was pretty hard and made it difficult to do a good job with the planters, but we got in all of our corn,” said farmer Daniel Fuoss. “We switched to beans and we’ve gotten about half of our beans in the ground so far.”
Planting is ahead on his farm, but Fuoss did experience a delay due to a 4-inch rainfall.
“Stuff is planting a lot easier now with the rain that we got, and it makes for a better outlook for the rest of the season,” Fuoss said.
This moisture makes for a better growing outlook.
“It’s going to allow for more even emergence on all the crops that go in after it now, I know beforehand we didn’t quite get all of the seed into moisture, so now we are planting everything into moisture and a little evener depth just because the ground is more consistent,” Fuoss said. “The crops that were planted beforehand all will be even emergence now so that should help us out as far as consistency, better weed control as everything shades and everything is about the same. Going forward it will really help get the plants up and going and make them so they can make it to the next rain without any stress.”
Source: agweek.com
Photo Credit: gettyimages-wiyadaa
Categories: South Dakota, Crops