East Central Indiana Crops off to Good Start

Jim Wicker May update

Jim Wicker-1For many Indiana farmers in east-central portions of the state all or most of the crops are planted and eyes are now on emergence. Jim Wicker is at New Lisbon, just north of I-70 in Henry County where it just hasn’t been the wet spring southern Indiana has experienced.

“It’s not been bad. Most of the corn is in here in Henry County. My corn has been in since approximately May the 9th and our soybeans were finished a few days after that. Everything for us is coming up and it looks like we’ve got a pretty good stand. Some people are finishing up soybeans here and we’ve not had the water that some areas south of Indianapolis have had over this spring, so we’ve been fortunate to get things in and it’s time to start thinking about side dressing corn.”

He expects to start that sometime this week. Late last week a cold spell hit the state but fell short of causing problems for Wicker.

“We didn’t have a frost or a freeze and the growing point is still well below the ground on corn. We’ve got a lot of corn really about the first true leaf as far as first true collared leaf. Most of it the stands look consistent. We had very good emergence I would say.”

The corn and soybean farmer also grows alfalfa.

“We already harvested some first cutting alfalfa a week ago. It was hard to get brave and mow many acres but we mowed about 14 acres of alfalfa a week ago and put up a few bales of hay there. We market our alfalfa through the quarter horse and thoroughbred markets, and that’s something my family has been involved in for a number of years.”

Weed pressure this spring hasn’t been much of problem. Wicker did spray for alfalfa weevils earlier in the spring.

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