McLean farmer has beans in ground
McLEAN – They often say seeds won’t grow in the bag. Luckily for Jacob Wade, his are actually growing in dirt.
The farmer from McLean already has 100 acres of soybeans in the ground and it isn’t even April 15.
Wade took advantage of nice weather in the middle of March to run his soil finisher on the acreage and come in right behind with his planter for a memorable St. Patrick’s Day of planting soybeans.
“I have checked on (the field) numerous times,” Wade told The Central Illinois Farm Network. “They’re about an inch long and are about a half inch from coming out of the ground.”
If we get a few 70-degree days in the near future, Wade expects to see some of the soybeans pop out of the ground. This is his sixth time planting early beans, and by early, we are talking March.
“After the April 15 time period, we just really start to lose our top end yield potential,” Wade explained.
Wade has discovered extremely high yields near the 100-bushel mark on soybeans are not achievable by late April or early May but the 80-bushel mark is still attainable. Looking back on his early planting decision, Wade said he may have planted more if he knew the spring would turn out like it has.
Central Illinois has experienced cool temperatures since the middle of March but not super cold conditions for more than a couple of nights. Wade’s 100 acres of soybeans in the ground is twice as much as he has ever planted this early in the year.
“The first year was just a couple of acres and I’ve kind of doubled each year in size.”
If the opportunity arises next year, Wade acknowledges he may throw even more seed in the ground really early. For now, he plans to stay with soybeans as long as ground conditions are still cool when farmers get back out in the fields. He prefers to have the ground temperature really close to 50 degrees before planting corn.
If the current field delay lasts until late April or early next month, Wade may even switch some bean acres to corn on corn since he feels the corn crop still has 100 percent potential for strong yields.
Wade experienced a dry August last season which hurt soybean yields and grain fill on corn. Even though diseases such as Tar Spot and Southern Rust were present, he still did alright with yields.
“We had really heavy disease pressure from the seven or eight inch rains that we had,” added Wade.
To follow Wade on Twitter, look for AgVantage Seeds. That is his business which sells LG, Wyffels and BASF products. AgVantage treats corn and soybeans and does fungicide applications as well.
