“Your rows sure are straight.” Those may have been the most pride-filling words I ever heard. They were first spoken to me by one of my landlords, Orville Larson, the spring after my dad passed away and all farming operations fell entirely on me. Orville made a habit of driving out to his farm to see
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That popular saying could just as easily apply to planting corn. It’s impossible to recover from planting time mishaps. Don’t believe it? Try this. Walk into a cornfield where plants have recently emerged. Identify a plant that’s shorter than the rest (some call these
Corn came screaming out of the ground in just five days on my farm at Agricenter International in Memphis. Other than the seed and herbicide, I’m using 100% Huma® products. My belief is that you don’t just farm the crop, you farm the soil. These Mid-South soils have low organic matter levels, so the pre-plant application
#Plant23 is well underway. From the time seeds are sown, how many days should it take for crops to emerge? That can vary greatly, from days to weeks. But for many crops, it’s not really about calendar days, but Growing Degree Days (GDD).
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge seed products by their bag covers. There’s lots of telling information on them. Just look at this bag of seeds going on my farm. The bag itself prominently features the brand name and logo (AgriGold), type of product (corn), the actual product name (A647-79VT2PRO) and
Celebrating Earth Day every April 22 is a great time to pause and reflect: How are we, today, treating the environment and the plants, animals, and people who live in it? What have we accomplished in the past year that makes our planet a better, more sustainable place to live and raise our families? What are our goals for future improvement?
Football may be a game of inches, but farming is a business of fractional inches. Take planting. Seed placement is paramount to the success of a crop. Farmers spend lots of time calculating the optimum rate and depth to plant their seeds based on genetics, soil type, soil conditions, weather, management practices and the desired output
Regenerative agriculture is not some passing fad. It’s now a movement. And it’s here to stay. How can we be sure? Just look at who’s driving it. Unlike well-intentioned predecessors, such as LISA (Low Input Sustainable Agriculture), regen ag has a financial benefactor: food companies. From lofty goals articulated by their CEOs to multi-million-dollar investments, consumer
Farmers love to grow corn. Only twice in modern history has corn not held the title of the most-grown crop in the USA. That was in 2018 and (if you count it) 1983, when the government’s PIK program artificially swayed planting practices. Spurred by record fertilizer prices, many projected soybeans would overtake corn last year
For most farmers, April means the start of planting season. It’s a lot like opening day for a baseball team: heavy planning, great excitement and anticipation, lots of optimism and more than a few watch outs. So when exactly do farmers start planting? While they all have a plan, Mother Nature usually has the final say. There is
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