A lot of farmers worked some long hours to complete fieldwork over the weekend because of the predicted rainy weather. There have been some heavy rains in extreme northwest Iowa early this week, but much of my area has missed those heavy rains. And, as a result, a lot of fieldwork was completed.
Soybean planting is nearing completion in most of my area, and soybean emergence has also begun. So far, many soybean fields look good with no discussion on replanting. However, since ‘replant’ happens every year somewhere, there needs to be around 75,000 plants per acre–which is 5 plants/foot of row in a 30-inch row–before replanting soybean needs to be considered.
There are also was a fair amount of corn that was replanted. It was a common site–frustrated farmers driving in emerged fields of corn with their corn planters–looking for those ‘blank’ areas to replant. A lot of that replant activity occurred from May 16 to May 20.
Those corn replant areas are now emerged and are looking good. Farmers are encouraged to check those replant areas since they can sometimes attract black cutworm activity.
