Walking through his last field of corn to plant, west central Illinois farmer Brent Johnson was nearing the finish line last Monday. Missing the spotty pop-up showers, he finished planting corn that evening.
“We’re planting a little deeper because they’re calling for spotty rains, so we’re not assured of a rain,” Johnson says, digging in his field to check planting depth. “We just set the planter a half a hole deeper the last time we refilled with seed.”
As he dug in the field, he liked what he saw. There was soil moisture deeper down, and that’s exactly where his seed was sitting.
“This will work until we do get a rain,” Johnson says.
Along with the spotty showers, Mother Nature also turned up the heat last week, a crucial ingredient to propel emergence in this freshly planted field.
“We’ll take the warm temperatures,” says Johnson, whose home farm is based in Ashland, Ill. “Frankly, we’re going to get this corn out of the ground that we’re planting, and for the soybeans, depending on how deep we plant them, in five to seven days. That’s perfect. And that’s also where we think some of our May yield benefit has come from in the past years is getting that corn uniformly out of the ground and quickly.”
As some farmers rush to get the crop planted early, Johnson doesn’t mind the wider window to plant. It’s the May planted corn that not only helps at harvest, but seems to yield better.
“I plant in May intentionally,” Johnson says. “We can’t harvest everything in a shorter window as we plant. And so I like corn that is not sub 15% moisture when we’re finishing. This will be one of our last fields we’ll harvest, so I am completely fine with having some May corn. Most of our May corn in most years has been our highest yielding, so I’m perfectly fine with what we’re doing here today.”
This isn’t the earliest Johnson has ever finished planting. He’s had plenty of years that they finished planting in April. He could have started planting in March, but he opted to wait.
“The soils were cool. We do plant beans first, but we waited until about April 8 to start soybeans,” Johnson says. “We planted five days, and then we got rained out, and we’ve had a lot of those just stop and go opportunities, but the end is within sight.”
That’s the story for central Illinois this year. It was a planting season that had an early start for many, only to have several stops due to rain.
“It’s been spread out,” Johnson says. “We’ve had intermittent planning windows where we get three days, five days. I’m not sure we’ve actually put an entire week together yet, but between that and trying to get things sprayed, it’s been a normal central Illinois spring.”
According to USDA’s latest Crop Progress Report, Illinois farmers who dodged the rain last week made some major planting progress. USDA says 74% of the state’s corn crop is planted, which is three points behind average, but a 20-point jump in just a week.
Soybeans are 67% planted, which is three points ahead of the normal pace.
Similar to other farmers this year, Johnson planted more corn. Typically, they’d be 50% to 55% corn, but this year, two-thirds of their acres are dedicated to corn.
When Farm Journal visited Johnson on Monday last week, he was finishing planting his final yield of corn with plans to move to his final field of soybeans the next day. Missing the rains that hit the area, he was able to finish as planned.
It’s a time of year Johnson doesn’t like to rush. Instead, he caters his fertilizer to each field’s need.
“That is just a planter applied fertilizer,” he says. “That’s just 32% UAN and ammonium thiosulfate mixed together at a ratio farm-by-farm, whether we’re using elemental sulfur or supplementing other ways. So that is farm by farm, planter applied, dribbled right on top of the row with the planter.”
Johnson says they change up everything, depending on the field they’re in.
“We’ll change the ammonia rate, whether we use N-serve, based on if the field has tile or doesn’t have tile and then what our yield goal is,” he says. “And then also as we get later in the calendar, we’ll lower our nitrogen rate because of the good prairie soils that we’re blessed to farm will give us more back.”
Field trials aren’t an afterthought for this Illinois farmer. Instead, they’ve become a pivotal part of his planting routine every year.
“I got that addiction from my father,” Johnson says with a smile on his face. “My father was an early adopter, which I’m blessed to have, but also he has a lot of trials. We have a trial literally in every field.”
And when it comes to fertilizer, the lessons have been not only valuable, but they’ve been surprising.
“A couple years ago, my father challenged me with how much nitrogen I was putting on. 20-year-old Brent would have dug my heels in and said, ‘no, you’re wrong.’ But 40-year old Brent said, ‘Well, okay, let’s figure it out.’”
“We’re on year four of the nitrogen trial, and we are learning that we are getting no more nitrogen from the soil. And that all this fancy stuff we’re doing with the planter and everything else that most of the time slows us down, is not necessarily the best ROI.”
Johnson plants for 275 bu. per acre on corn and 85 bu. per acre on soybeans, but the long-term goal is 300 bu. per acre corn and 100 bu. beans across his entire farm.
“I think we’re off to a great start,” Johnson adds. “I think that is attainable, and with the prices, we need to have those yields.”
Johnson is neutral to bullish on the year as he hangs on to hope that crop prices will improve while controlling what he can.
