Numerous non-farming folks have asked me how spring planting and the crops are doing and they ask because they think we have, and had, a backward spring. Not so. Okay, the nights have been a little cool and no real hot days so far. But it’s been a perfect spring for getting field work done and there were no delays in planting. Even wet parts of fields dried up nicely to allow planting. The ground was warm enough for planting soybeans by mid-May.
Last year my corn was planted on June 3 and the last of the soybeans went in on June 14. This year the corn went in on May 16 and 235 acres of soybeans were planted by May 25. I finished planting 82 acres of soybeans on June 2.
The crop went in quickly with the help of a custom operator who plants the corn for us and also plants the large fields in soybeans with a 30-ft wide drill. My largest field is 174 acres and it took two days to plant it.
Rainfall for the month of May on my farm was only 31 mm or slightly more than an inch. Last year in May we had 156 mm of rainfall or slightly more than 6 inches. June was also wet with 108 mm. July brought 94 mm and August 102 mm. Some areas in the county had more rainfall last year.
I have a rain gauge and record rainfall every morning at 7 a.m. and write it down. I can go back many years.
So with only 31 mm of precipitation during the month of May you can see how the fields dried quickly and in three weeks thousands of acres of crops were planted.
Farmers Forum, a monthly agricultural publication in eastern and western Ontario, has a front page photo in the June issue of a young smiling farmer beside his corn planter at Chesterville and the caption reading: Excellent planting conditions.
The paper said most eastern Ontario farmers were pretty well finished planted by May 22, according to agronomist Gilles Quesnel. He is quoted as saying Eastern Ontario had a very solid planting season, with field conditions just shy of excellent.
An Ottawa-area farmer planted the last of his 850 acres of soybeans on May 22. By this time last year he was just finishing his corn. A Metcalfe cash-crop farmer planted 2,350 acres of corn and soybeans and finished on May 22. He started planting on May 7 and stopped only one day because of rain.
Napanee’s Max Kaiser, who crops over a thousand acres and one of the first in the field in Eastern Ontario, was finished planting his corn on May 6, and his soybeans were in the ground on May 21.
Over in Campbellford in Northumberland County, a cash-crop farmer put 1,200 acres of corn in the ground in the first week of May. By May 22, half his soybeans were in the ground but with some rain it was start and stop.
What I liked about our spring planting season was there was no hard rainfall that crusted the top layer of newly planted soil, making emergence difficult for the sprouted seeds. As of June 11, I recorded 36 mm of precipitation, which came on six days. A few times it only amounted to 1 or 3 mm but it was a welcome rainfall.
