Planting season is upon us and for most area farmers that means field preparations are being done now.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Zach Minnihan says there are several methods that farmers use to get their fields ready for the planting season.

“If you’re in a typical tillage situation you’re probably going to run some type of field cultivator or a dirt passover to work that dirt up and help dry it out, and get that seedbed prepped. We have a lot of no till guys around kind of the listening area that we cover. They’re very minimum ground disturbance, so they’re just going to run right through with the planter when it’s time to plant. They might do a strip till pass where they’re doing a bandit type fertilizer. It just depends on the operation.”      

Minnihan notes that farmers typically start planting at the start of the federal crop insurance date of April 11th. This is so crops are federally insured if a disaster comes through and wipes out crops that are planted. However, Minnihan points out farming is weather dependent.

“And we kind of advise: take the calendar with a little bit of an asterisk. Because we would rather have the field conditions and ten-day, five-day (weather) forecast in our advantage versus just planting because the calendar says so.”   

According to the first weekly crop report from the Iowa Department of Agriculture, many fields continue to be wet across the state and there were 2.7 days suitable for fieldwork.