Growers experience everything

CHATSWORTH – From cold weather and excessive rain to perfect planting conditions, local farmers have been through about everything this season and it isn’t even June yet.
Plenty of corn was planted early in dry fields when it was traditionally considered too cold to plant.
“It looks like some of this corn is really perking up and looking pretty good,” said Chatsworth farmer Tim McGreal. “Some of the stuff that was planted a couple of weeks after that in mid-April is starting to come up.”
Now the big question is what will happen to corn planted a couple of weeks ago ahead of all the rain. Some locations received four inches or more but that corn appears to be coming out of it alright. McGreal estimates around 75 to 80 percent of the corn is planted in his area.
Many turned to early soybean planting this year and that has been successful for McGreal in previous seasons.
“We started the bean planter a couple of days before we started the corn planter. So far, that looks like an okay decision.”
McGreal notes it is easy to locate areas of a field that lack drainage due to slow emergence and lack of uniformity.
“Agronomically speaking, this spring I think is going to point back to drainage being a big part of our final yield,” McGreal added.