With the late planting start, we were unable to achieve good weed control with our vertical till machine on some fields. The weeds were larger than 3″ and they just slipped through without being fully uprooted. On a couple of fields we had to use a pass with chemical to know out the weeds to give the soybeans a good start without competition.
Planting soybeans on ridges.
Ridges after planting soybeans.
It took until May 16 to get rolling in soybeans. A couple of weeks later than ideal but there are places south and east of us that are continuing to struggle with water issues preventing them from planting corn. This year is a little different than what we’ve done for seedbed preparation prior to soybean planting. Most of our planting is still on ridges but we do have one field that is following corn that wasn’t ridged in 2017. To prepare that seedbed we did a fall pass and a spring pass with our Excelerator vertical till machine. The results were beyond expectations! We couldn’t have asked for a better seedbed.
