As you drive much of the Indiana countryside you’ll see a lot of green as recently planted crops are already emerging. USDA says 61 percent of Indiana corn is now planted and much of that was accomplished last week. Looking around the northern half of the state, on the Cass and Howard County line Kevin Wilson has finished planting both corn and soybeans. Now he’s looking at crops emerging from the ground.
“A lot of the corn is emerging and some of the beans,” he told HAT. “Guys who got out and planted them a little early they’re starting to come through. The beans are in a little bit longer window but a lot of the corn is starting to pop through.”
Wilson finished Friday and was happy to get about an inch of rain over the weekend. Lynn Teel farms mostly in White County, but also some in Tippecanoe and Carroll Counties. It was getting dry there so he is also happy the rains came right on the heels of a great week of progress.
“It started out everybody of course was delaying a little bit just because of the cold weather and not knowing really what to do,” he said. “We didn’t start quite as early as some started but once we thought it was going to warm up some we went ahead and started and got along real well. We had a really good week last week. It was dry and then it warmed up so we put a lot of corn and beans in the ground. We ended up with about 200 acres of soybeans left and about a hundred acres of corn yet to plant.”
Teel said the warm weather has brought all of the corn above ground and he expects to see emerged beans Tuesday.
Further north Kip Tom says it’s a mixed bag, but he’s happy with his progress.
“Here in the north central area of Indiana where we’re from, Kosciusko, Elkhart, Marshall, Noble, Whitley, and Huntington Counties, our own progress we’re 70 percent on commercial corn, just getting a start on soybeans, and have about 30 percent of our seed corn in. We know that there is a number of producers done with all of their entire corn acreage up in this area and have a good start into their soybeans. So it’s a little bit of a mixed bag but definitely ahead of I think the progress where we thought we’d be 3-4 weeks ago.”
Tom said last week was also significant on his farm. Sixty-eight percent of the crops were planted from Sunday to Friday morning.
