It is starting to feel like spring. Our area has actually been very dry for March until this past weekend when we got 1.23” of rain Saturday morning. Prior to that the soil was exceptionally dry, having missed multiple other storm systems. Other than 0.35” of rainfall on March 5, we had not had any significant rainfall since the middle of February. Temperatures have been around average with ups and downs as March usually brings. March has lived up to its windy reputation with multiple days of very strong winds sometimes peaking above 50 mph.
Out in the field the dry conditions gave a great opportunity to get spring bed and field prep started and get some early crops planted. Many typical cool season crops have a first planting in the ground. It was so nice that I even went out on a limb and planted 4 rows of sweet corn at the Baebler Educational Farm, south of waterloo on St. Patricks Day. I no-tilled it and followed up with a burndown and residual herbicide the next day so for a small area it was a limited investment and if it grows will be nice to hopefully have some early sweet corn. It was a gamble, but you don’t know if you don't try.
I set out some lettuce transplants at home on February 28. Aside from feeding my salad hungry family and maybe a local soup kitchen this is also a small observational trial of 5 butterhead/romaine lettuce varieties from Johnny’s. Starting from the front right they are Rosaine, Little Gem, Thurinus, Nancy, and Skyphos. I have them under a plastic covered low tunnel to start, it will probably mainly stay opened for now. They have not quite been in the ground a month as of now.
Lots of questions about cover crop management as things really start to grow. Remember cereal grains like cereal rye and wheat take up a lot of nitrogen as they grow and get bigger. If you have intentions of incorporating these cover crops with tillage you should do this when they are still small (roughly 12” tall or less) or use a herbicide to terminate them and follow up with tillage later when you need to. If they do get out of hand and tillage is still needed then try to mow them first for ease of tillage and faster break down. If you are using the residue in a no-till system, this is not a big issue as the main nitrogen tie up happens when you incorporate all of that high carbon residue into the soil for the microbes to process all at once.