Tom Hoverstad – Minnesota April Planting and Weather Update
Good day, and welcome to the University of Minnesota Extension crop cast Minnesota crop cast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai with the University of Minnesota Extension. I'm a regional extension educator and along with my co host here doctor Seth Nave. Seth is University of Minnesota Extension Soybean Specialist and Seth, we're getting into the spring season. We have a special guest here, we're gonna get right into it, Tom Hober from University of Minnesota Research and Outreach Center at Waseca.
Speaker 1:And, we're talking on this mid to late part of April here. And, Tom, I guess at this point in time, people have made some progress in the field, but we're still early enough and so forth that we don't have to really lose a lot of sleep and be worried about our planting date. How are things at Waseca?
Speaker 2:Yes. We've had a planting window open up here about the middle of April, similar to last year. Last year, the spring of 2023, we had a string of 80 degree days in the middle of April. A number of people planted then. Some of that didn't turn out so well last year because we had a 6 inch rain in May that caused some trouble.
Speaker 2:I don't see that happening again. Some chose to take advantage of that little planting window. I had a number of people ask me about what's best because the system that we're on the backside of now, it's cool. Soils were plenty warm. They've cooled back down now, and this system was pretty well forecast that if you plant, it's gonna be a a rain and then some cold weather after, and a lot of people don't like to do that.
Speaker 2:Some chose to just wait. Others and my thinking is if getting a couple of days in around the 13th, 14th, 15th April is gonna help you get your planting done by the 5th May. I would go ahead and plant. If you think delaying till April 25th and starting after the system moves through and soils warm back up and you can still get done by May 5th, I think that's a good choice too. So it's really an individual.
Speaker 2:Some people indicated, you know, I've got this farm that's a 20 mile drive. If I can go get that out of the way, and then the rest of the spring, I can concentrate near home. That's a good idea too. Soil types maybe make a difference. Some have some pretty well drained soils that if they plan early, they aren't too concerned about that.
Speaker 2:Others said if if I plant and I get 2 or 3 inches of rain on it, I'm just gonna have to replant anyway. So there's all kinds of scenarios, and everybody's gotta know their own operation.
Speaker 3:So I guess we're we're kinda classifying all of this under risk management. Right? So with the risk, we're we're looking as farmers, we're looking at risk of adverse weather in the future and whether that future weather is gonna be harmful to the the crop we planted or or not. So this question about better in the bag or in the in the ground isn't really a question about today. It's about the future.
Speaker 3:Right? So that's it seems like we're always coming back to this, and and I think you really skillfully brought out the fact that this is very different farm to farm, depending on the number of acres and the scale of the equipment and things like this. And it's it's getting that work done in the future. How can we how can we be in a position to get it all done by, as you said, May 5th? I think that's a that's a great target.
Speaker 3:Is that is that kinda how you're seeing it too?
Speaker 2:Yes. I've even stretched that May 5th out to about 10th May because year in year out, I've done planning date. As many of you know, I've been at this about 40 years, and the number of years I've always done some planning date work, and I start about 20th April. My second date, I put in May 5th to May 10th. And more recently, that second planning has come out just as good as the first, if not even better.
Speaker 2:And I've thought about our climate and what it's done to us. Now Minnesota's climate is getting warmer, and it's getting wetter. Of those 2, I think on the farm, the wetter is the one that causes us a little bit more management. The warmer part, much of the warming is in the winter anyway when we're not talking about crop farming, But it's warmer by just a little bit. We still run the risk of frost, and we run, you know, the the the spring frost dates, the last date in the spring, the first fall fall frost are still risks for us in the northern corn belt here.
Speaker 2:But by and large, the big thing about planting early over the decades is that we take a better chance of especially corn pollinating in better moisture conditions. Our rainfall is up, like, 25%. It's significantly up. We don't see those hot dry conditions that we used to have to deal with around pollination, and that can be critical on corn. If if it's trying to tassel and we have very little soil moisture, it's hot and dry, like August when our lawns used to turn brown every year, We just don't see that as much anymore.
Speaker 2:So I think we can spread that planning date out to the 10th May and still avoid a lot of the risks the risks associated with poor pollination and still get a good crop by the time we freeze in the fall.
Speaker 3:That's that's really interesting that you bring up the, the the focus on the midseason. Because I do think I do think a lot of us think about the spring and fall because that's when we're in the fields, and that's where we're really impacted directly. Our our operations are impacted. Right? Whether it's raining or cold impacts whether we're in the field, and we write that date on the calendar, for records.
Speaker 3:And so we kinda remember how this how weather impacts both, spring and fall activities. But sometimes we kind of maybe we forget a little bit. And maybe that midseason thing about temperature and pollination is just a little bit messy too because we don't know at the time when we're getting that hot, dry weather the impacts we're gonna have in the end of the year. And so, I maybe the I'm just thinking through the psychology on this, but I really I I do appreciate this idea that the the changes in weather may be may be benefiting us mostly in the middle of the year rather than having big effects, on the ends.
Speaker 1:You know, Tom
Speaker 2:I think it'll I think it allows for a longer pollination season. I honestly do. Even some of our temperature records, we don't see as many 100 degree temperatures as we did. Humidity, I think, is the big thing. We're more humid than we used to be, and that that usually is helpful at pollination.
Speaker 2:90 degrees and humid, isn't detrimental. A 105 with no humidity is trouble.
Speaker 1:Tom, maybe I'd like to segue a little bit. We talked about planting dates and and you mentioned, you know, the climate and and weather. And and especially this this last year, you know, we had almost a 90 day period here where we're above normal temperatures. And I think you actually took advantage of that to what I would say run an observation, not an experiment, but an observation at Waseca in terms of being able to actually plant extremely early and I'm just curious how did that turn out in terms of your observations and and what did you plant and and when did when did that go on the ground?
Speaker 2:Well, that was something I saw the opportunity. It was the end of February. It was unusually warm, about 70 degrees. I'm pretty sure it was a Monday. I came in and I said, I'm gonna walk out in the field and just see what it looks like.
Speaker 2:If the soil is workable we had already lost our soil frost, which is unusual for that time of year. We didn't have a lot of soil for us. We had a very mild winter, But things you need to watch for in the spring of the year on the farm. One is when the soil thaws out, we lose our soil frost. Soil is to dry out, soils to warm up.
Speaker 2:So we had done 2 out of the 3. We lost our soil frost. It was dry on top. I I mean, I went out there. It was very workable.
Speaker 2:Of course, we hadn't warmed up. It was it was the 26th February. And I said, you know what? I think we can plant. So we did.
Speaker 2:We got we have small equipment. It's not hard to get. We planted spring wheat, corn, and soybeans. The spring wheat, I was confident in. This is not the first time I've done it in February.
Speaker 2:Back in the eighties, we had a real dry February. A plot technician that's now retired and I, we did the same thing. We said, let's go just plant some wheat. It turned out fine, but we didn't plant corn and soybeans then. So we planted some corn and soybeans on the 26th February just to see.
Speaker 2:My thinking is this may not happen again for 50 years. I think it may be a 100 years. But when it does happen again, we'll be able to say, well, back in 24, we saw those conditions and here's what happened. So I've had that corn and soybeans in the ground. Now for nearly 2 months, I've calculated the heat units.
Speaker 2:We've had about a 157 heat units. We usually look for germination for in about a 125 heat units. It's seen enough, but it's not up yet. I don't know what we'll get out of it. I wasn't expecting a normal stand.
Speaker 2:I thought it could be anywhere from 0 to pretty good. Now what I've done is I've taken a few of those seeds that have been in the soil nearly 2 months, brought them into what I'm calling seedling intensive care. We have a unit here that works on soybean cyst nematode. They have a grow room that has lights. It's about 85 degrees by day.
Speaker 2:I think maybe cools off a little bit at night, maybe to 70, 75. So you can put seeds in there, and if they're capable of growing, they will grow in there. So we transferred a few into that. I'm calling it intensive care. And if if they can't survive after they're in there for a while, I'm gonna declare them dead.
Speaker 2:But, we also did the same thing about the middle of March, March 19th. We put in another one. Those seeds actually look like they have a chance. And we did it again on April 15th, what I would call an early planting in a so called normal year. So we've got 3 scenarios out there.
Speaker 2:First one, I don't know. I have I've had those seeds in the grow room for a few days now. I haven't seen any of date 1 germinate. A couple of the soybeans actually did. The February soybeans actually are growing in the grow room.
Speaker 2:I only put a few seeds in there, not not a not a lot. The first corn, I haven't seen any success with that yet. The May the March planting, excuse me. I said May. I meant March.
Speaker 2:I think that's got a chance.
Speaker 3:It's it's very interesting. I'm already dreaming up other experiments. It's it's but I'm glad you took advantage of it. I wish we had, you know, it's time to plan some of these things, but these just happen. I'm I'm really glad you did take advantage of it because I think there's a lot of interesting stuff that you're gonna learn from that.
Speaker 3:And I I think these digging these up and bringing these inside is really smart idea. It is to see the potential for them. Because you are in this weird situation where we put them under quite a bit of stress, but they had a little bit of heat early. But then, you know, we we outlive this long piece there. So I did wanna do selfishly take a second to to mention that we Nibel Ceruto and I put out a crop news this week on early planting in soybean, and it kinda highlights some of the things that Tom is bringing up about timing.
Speaker 3:And so Enable modeled out a lot of scenarios for planting soybeans early relative to early frost dates. And it's most of it's very conservative measure, but it it gives us an idea how frost rates differ or frost dates differ around the state. And then he's actually able to use historical data to back calculate. Calculate. If it does take 200 heat units for a soybean to emerge, when would that planting date be prior to any individual frost within that year?
Speaker 3:So we can actually determine what would be the date to plant across the past, you know, historical 20 years or so, and what's when when should you plant in order to be outside of a of a frost window? So it's kind of an academic interest in our a study, but I think if people are really interested in that, I think it's worth taking a look at, and it does show the differences. It it does come back to what you end up predicting these kinda late April, early May dates for planting, soybean, which tend to be what people are doing anyway. And so it's it's good to run the math. It's kinda like double checking your math.
Speaker 3:Right? You run the math, and you determine that what we see in the field is actually pretty close to what works in reality. So I it's, again, nice little exercises. So check out check out Crop News this week if you wanna look for for that story. It's called risk management considerations for early planted soybean.
Speaker 1:Well, Tom
Speaker 2:I think there I think there is a lot of interest in planting soybeans earlier and earlier. I think as farmers look at what the conditions are and they say, well, I don't know if I should plant corn. It's it's a little marginal. Occasionally, they will go out and plant some soybeans for a couple reasons. I think soybeans, if you get 70% of a stand, I think you've shown over the years that we can get very good yields without optimum stands.
Speaker 2:Corn, that's probably not true. And if, you know, there is a disaster, it seems like the investment in a corn soybean crop is is less than a corn crop, so it's probably a little less risky. I think a lot of people are interested in planting soybeans early, and I think your data shows that early planted, year in and year out, certainly does better.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's really interesting. You know, I don't, again, I don't want to talk, you know, self reflect on this too much. But, you know, my colleague in Wisconsin, Sean Connolly, is really the promoter of a lot of this early planting in soybean. He's really the evangelist behind this that got a lot of this movement going.
Speaker 3:And his focus was entirely on yields in soybeans, and I never really bought into that, and I never really believed it. I think there's value in planting early, but when you're talking about planting corn versus soybean, I just I can't get my head around this idea that we should be planting soybeans earlier than corn for purely yield on a yield perspective. So that's when I started talking about this risk management thing, and that is just what you're saying, Tom, is about time management and which which crop might stand a little bit tougher conditions better and then which one is, you know, cheaper to replant. And that's soybean in both cases. And that's kinda what I've been hearing from farmers that have planted soybeans by this date this year, is they've all talked about this from a risk management standpoint.
Speaker 3:So I I think we're kinda coming around to something here that I think does make some sense, and I there's a lot of folks trying this this year. So I think we're gonna learn, you know, trial by fire, but I think, I think we're gonna kinda figure some dial some of this in. And I I'm just glad that farmers are willing to be a little bit creativity out there going, and and folks are thinking about things differently and thinking about how they farm in a little bit more creative way. And so it's giving them chances to at least experiment with some things.
Speaker 1:You know, Tom, you do a excellent job on watching the weather over the years, and you have a lot of good data, at Waseca. Where are we right now on on soil temperatures and and what do you project here going into this next week and last week in in April, there's maybe a slow climb back up into the into the sixties. Are are we in a good position here in in terms of planting Or, you know, obviously, we've got good seed treatments here as well, but any comments on that?
Speaker 2:Well, I do watch soil temperatures, and we have a chart. If you want to see it, I update it as often as I can. This time of year, I try to do it at least 3 times a week because people are watching that. Right now, our 2 and 4 inch soil temperatures are in the upper forties, and that's average. Now on those warm days when we had our short planning window, 2 inch soil temperatures got up to about the upper sixties, but averaged more like mid fifties.
Speaker 2:So what you'll see from our end, and I think what most people want to look at is average. Interestingly, a lot of people, they'll call and say, what's the soil temperature? Like, the soils warm up in the spring, and they stay there, and they cool off in the fall. Well, that's only true at a depth of about 3 feet. The seedling depth soil temperatures go up and down just like the air temperature, and people do want to see that.
Speaker 2:Long term history shows that we are at the time of year when soil temperatures average about 50. We're right there about now. So they're a little cooler than average now. This morning, I've got them at, like, 47 degrees. I think it's going to stay cool.
Speaker 2:It's cool through the weekend here. Next week doesn't sound abnormally warm, but I would expect soil temperatures will sneak back up in that 50 degree range next week. And typically, by the 1st week of May, it no longer becomes an issue. We're usually in the mid fifties and and moving up right around May 10th.
Speaker 1:I know Jeff Coulter would say, you know, fine. Go ahead. Don't look back, so to speak, on that on the soil temperature when we're getting this close to, the 1st May.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think most farmers look at conditions a lot more than temperature. If the conditions are right and I've done it both ways. I've the spring of 2013, remember that was the year that a lot of farmers used the prevent plant option. We had a terrible spring.
Speaker 2:So I talked to the corn growers, and I did some planting date research, 14, 15, 16, the years following that. The 1st year I did it in 2014, I did exactly what you're supposed to do. It was our first planning date. It was about April 20th. It was cold, but the forecast was good.
Speaker 2:It was sunny. We were out there putting the crop in. It was cold and windy, but by the next day, the forecast temperature were sixties seventies. And we planted corn and it did fine. The second date was the opposite.
Speaker 2:It was what they tell you not to do. Soils were warm. There was cold weather in the forecast. It actually started raining just as we got done planting. A lot of people say that first drink of water shouldn't be cold.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what happened, and stands were fine. So we did it both ways, the way you're supposed to do it and the way you're not supposed to do it, and corn came through just fine both ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's interesting. Everybody dissects this stuff to death. Right? I mean, I and there is there's good biology behind a lot of this, this idea about what are conditions at planting or within that first 24 hours.
Speaker 3:And then what what are conditions like within the next, you know, few days to a week, you know, when you wanna start to see germination occurring. But it's really I mean, I think there's a lot of talk, but I don't I haven't seen a lot of really good data that that says that anything other than average temperatures over that period between, you know, planting and emergence is really that important. What what are your feelings on that, Tom?
Speaker 2:My feeling is I think the laboratory, you can demonstrate this imbibitional chilling, and it's tough on ceilings. But there's a lot of variabilities in the field that you can't demonstrate in a laboratory. And I think you can you can have problems either way, and you can have success either way. So I think bottom line is what we just talked about. Most people look at the conditions at the time, and if it's after your crop insurance coverage date, which for our county here is April 10th, that goes county by county and and differs by crop also.
Speaker 2:But, usually, if it's after that date and conditions are fit, we don't worry a lot about the temperature. And it's awful rare that by 10th May, we don't have adequate soil temperatures for germination. It's almost unbelievable what the sun does for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And the other side of this too is that we are in Minnesota, and so typically our limitation is soil conditions. We have we're we're, you know, up completely apart from temperatures. We just can't get into the field because the the ground is is too wet. We can't work the ground or we can't plant appropriately.
Speaker 3:You know, obviously, that's related to the temperature, but when it's, you know, that seems to be the limiting factor. And I think if if you if a farmer just went out and ignored the calendar, ignored, ignored the thermometer, they probably could do a decent job of of getting a crop established just by just by looking at at soil conditions. And that that probably follows a little bit like what Coulter's referring to with his corn planting dates too.
Speaker 1:You know, we we preface this where we are recording this podcast on the 19th April and of course we're hoping for sunshine and I think that we indicated that was probably our biggest factor in in helping in terms of driving those soil temperatures up is to having some sunlight and sunshine besides, you know, overcast conditions next week. Thinking ahead here a little bit, you know, you're working with weed science. I'm just gonna segue just a little bit. I was talking with Tom Peters, our extension sugar beet wheat specialist, indicated that in in some places in southern Maine and western Minnesota, they've already close to 50, 55 percent of the sugar beets already planted. And he's optimistic because they actually took some time and have some time this year to put down some pre emergent server sites, Tom.
Speaker 1:So, I think that's the next thing to think about here in this realm. We do have some weed seeds that will germinate as well. Any just quick comments about looking forward here as far as growers are concerned and doing a good job, not only planting, but that early season weed control?
Speaker 2:Well, it's fine to look at some of these early germinators. When I think of that, I think of, giant ragweed. It's often one of the first weeds I see. Another weed that everyone has to deal with that really is subject to weather in the spring is common lamb's quarters. First thing about it, everyone's got it.
Speaker 2:It's everywhere. And when it's cool and dry in the spring, that's when I see lamb's quarter becoming much more of a problem. When it's warmer and wetter, the crop gets going, and lamb's quarter seems to not be as competitive. The other weed everyone's dealing with is waterhemp, and the bad news about that is it can start germinating now, and it'll germinate well into the summer. So you can't you can't avoid that one.
Speaker 2:I think I wanna go back a minute to something Seth brought up about farmers planting, looking at their planting windows, and, you know, the climate scientists keep talking about our our season getting longer. But I'm not so sure that helps on the farm because like Seth mentioned, we don't just look at temperature, it's moisture. We have to still have to wait for fields to dry out. If the climate scientists say our frost dates are changing, well, that doesn't really help because we need the conditions as much as the frost dates. So that's that's something to really take into consideration is just because the the climate scientists say, oh, our season is much longer than it used to be.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really change our decision making on the farm.
Speaker 1:Are we okay on our soil moisture right now in terms of that? We had a moderate drought to a little bit dry conditions. We've had snow. We've had some rain. As a whole in southern Minnesota, what's your observations are?
Speaker 1:Do we need more half an inch more a week here? Or how are we how are we doing in terms of the top and the and the subsoil?
Speaker 2:I think we're in a very good position here in the southern part of the state. Even though the drought monitor, which they update that weekly, and I don't know that it brought into the consideration that system that just went through that brought about an inch and a half of rain to most everyone. But my feeling in the spring of the year is it doesn't take a lot of moisture to get the crop started, so I don't mind being a little on the dry side in the spring of the year. Now hydrologists look at drought a little bit differently than I would on the farm. They consider things like streams and long term precipitation.
Speaker 2:We can be a little shorter thinking on the farm. We've got enough moisture now to get the crop started. We need moisture in June, July, and August. And, you know, on the other side, if we do get plenty of moisture, we can get too dry on the farm a lot quicker than the hydrologists show that we're in a drought. We can go 2 weeks and be too dry, and the hydrologists don't show up on the on the drought monitor.
Speaker 2:So I pay attention a little bit more to walking in the field than looking at the drought monitor to say what we need for rain.
Speaker 3:For sure. And, I mean, then, you know, you were talking about spatial differences. This drought monitor looks at really large scale things, you know, county county kinda scale. And what we're really talking about is is in the in the farm, if you've got 10 or 20% of your acres in that farm that are suffering, That's a big deal. So just some sandy knolls and some areas, can you know, are gonna fire up and be tough pretty early.
Speaker 3:So the other question I had cut for you was kind of the soil profile question. I mean, if we were really dry early, You we got pretty good recharges, you said, but, you know, we're not we're not completely full for the most part. So does that mean that some of these later rains we had, this past week when when this broadcast is aired, is, does that mean that though that water is gonna kinda go away a little bit quicker? Or do you think do you think, that, it doesn't really play any effect that we basically have this kind of water perched up high in the soil profile, and it just takes a few days of of some warm windy weather to get to dry that soil surface. How how's your hydrology, and what do you think about this kind of this kind of year?
Speaker 3:Is it different than we have most years, or is it pretty much the same?
Speaker 2:I think the inch and a half we just had percolated in pretty well. I didn't see a lot of ponding water that there are some springs when a inch and a half rain in the middle of April causes a real mess. Now let's go back to, like, 1st October. We were really quite dry. We had an unusual winter where a lot of our winter precipitation became available soil moisture.
Speaker 2:We added to the soil profile during the winter, which is unusual. Usually, we get a fall recharge. We didn't get much rain in November, but December was pretty good to us. Even our January, February rain, because we didn't have much soil for us, became soil moisture. I think our profile is nearly full.
Speaker 2:If we got another inch, I think you'd see quite a bit of tile flow. So we've got enough to last through the planting season if we don't get any more rain, and that's I think what most farmers would like to see a couple weeks here where we don't get any precipitation, then get a little bit here and there. There are springs where this inch and a half would have really put farmers in a bad mood because now they're looking at a 10 day delay before it dries up, and it's gonna be a mess. I think that's why a lot of farmers didn't use that April 15th window to plant because they knew, well, it's only gonna rain an inch and a half or 2. I can take that.
Speaker 2:I'll be back out in the field in 5 days. That's not a problem.
Speaker 3:I'm smart.
Speaker 1:Tom, we're at the end of our time allotment here on the podcast. Any last words that you'd like to leave with the folks?
Speaker 2:My thinking is let's have a good crop this year.
Speaker 3:I like the positive attitude.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that, Tom. And I know that you do publish some weather information from Waseca. People can look at that online. We also have, of course, our University of Minnesota Extension web pages set on both soybeans and corn that are online and the crop news that we offer as well. So we want to say thanks to Tom for taking time here to visit with us a little bit about the planting season here, particularly in southern Minnesota and a little projection of what we might be looking at for 2024.
Speaker 1:So thank you again. This has been with Tom Hoberstead, University of Minnesota Waseca Research and Outreach Center, scientist at Waseca. I'm Dave Nicolai with University of Minnesota Extension Educator and also my co host Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension Soybean Specialist and say thanks for joining us on this version of the episode of University of Minnesota Extension Cropcast.
