Wet Spring, Dry Fall

     The best wheat crop I have ever raised resulted from 5.75 inches of rain in April and May.  A heavy wet snow on May 1 isn’t included in that total, since the rain gauge really couldn’t record the snow.

     Since May, things have slowed.  June provided not quite 2 inches.  July recorded less than one half inch.  It was nice to have a dry harvest.

    Now it is time to plant wheat and a little moisture would certainly be appreciated.  The last good rain was August 3, one and one fourth inches.  Since then, Mother Nature has bestowed only a half inch.

     September came and went with a big fat zero for precipitation.  That doesn’t bode well for wheat planting.  It has been too warm for September as well.

     I made a test run with the drills on September 8, but judged it too dry.  Some wheat did come up, but a lot didn’t sprout, thus confirming my judgment.

    

      I resumed planting on the 28^th, figuring it will take some moisture to get the crop up.  I’m gambling that the moisture will do as well on the already-planted seeds as it will for those planted after it rains.

      The danger for seeds planted before it rains is too hard of a rain will either silt in the rows or crust over.  A rain that comes too hard and fast will wash the top of the rows down into the furrows.  The silt may bury the seed so deep the blade can’t emerge.  Hot weather following a hard rain can create a crust on top of the soil that the seedlings can’t penetrate.  Replanting will be a necessity in either case.

    The third possibility is continued drought.  In that case, I have done the best thing I can, roughed up the surface with the drill rows, which will help prevent wind erosion, dust bowl conditions.

      A few other factors influenced the decision to plant in the dry soil.  First, I have never planted so late.  In 1984 or 85, I replanted a few acres in November. 

      That was another dry fall like this one.  When I was about a day or two from being done, there came a shower of rain, about a quarter of an inch.  Everything I had planted up to that point came up.  Something like thirty acres planted after that shower didn’t do so well.

      We got some rain and snow in late October.  In November, it had melted and dried enough to get the tractor and drills into the field.  So I replanted that thirty acres in November.

      It never emerged.  The seed sprouted and tried to come up, but it died when a cold snap froze the ground, and the seedling, too.  I plowed that thirty acres and planted Prozo millet in May of the next year.  November wheat planting didn’t work very well.   

     What did I learn from that experience?  In October, it can snow.  Snow and cooler weather keep the soil moist, perhaps too moist for tractor and drill.  By the time the ground dries enough to plant, it could be too late to plant.  It would be better to have the seed in the ground if it’s going to snow and stay wet.

      Then there is superstition, maybe.  Tradition says you plant aboveground crops from the new moon to the full moon.  I need to be done planting wheat before the middle of October when the full moon occurs.

      The factors have been weighed and the decision made.  I mounted the old tractor and put the wheat seeds fairly deep into some pretty dry ground.  Time will tell if I made the right decision.

     Consolation comes in two old sayings.  Many of the old neighbors say, after agonizing over a decision, “It won’t matter fifty years from now.” It won’t.

     The other is an old rhyme:  “Plant in the dust and your bins will bust”.  Watch out old granary.

      (For more on the old tractor and drills, see http://50farm.blogspot.com/2012/09/planting-wheat.html.)