March ideal for harvesting corn left over winter
By Janet Kubat Willette
jkubat@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 04/15/2010 8:50 AM
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Lori Feltis created a dust cloud as she combined corn last week north of Stewartville.
There were no ears on the ground and no tipped stalks in the field, save for the ones the deer tipped over on their way in and out of their resting spot.
It's the first time since she's been farming that she's left corn in the field over winter, but the corn fared well even though the snow was above the ears.
The test weight went up and the moisture went down over the winter. Moisture dropped from 27 percent to 28 percent last fall to 14.2 percent last week. Test weight climbed from 48 to 52 and a half to 54, Feltis said.
She was able to harvest twice as fast, driving her John Deere through the field at 5.4 to 5.8 miles per hour last week, compared to 3.2 mph in the fall. And there were no lines at the elevator, where the corn was trucked immediately after she unloaded it from the combine hopper. The corn was marketed last fall, Feltis said.
There was one wet spot in the field that she wasn't able to harvest, but said they'd come out later and harvest it by hand since every kernel brings in money.
After harvesting her crop, she had custom harvesting to do. She planned to finish harvesting this week.
While she was harvesting, her son was planting oats, wheat and alfalfa.
University of Minnesota Regional Extension educator Lisa Behnken said March was a drying month with no additional moisture to speak of. The molds that were a problem last fall went away or stopped once the moisture dropped below 20 percent.
Farmers have been pleasantly surprised by the yields they have pulled in this spring and by how good the corn stood through the winter.
"It's a total surprise," she said. "Your could never have predicted this."
As of Dec. 20, the corn harvest in Minnesota was 93 percent complete.
The window of warm, dry weather in March is not only allowing farmers in southern Minnesota to finish harvesting last year's crop, they are also able to do some spring tillage, put on anhydrous and plant small grains.
Behnken figures they'll be some corn in the ground before too long.