Jim Stute has been tracking weather data for 30 years on his farm in East Troy, Wis. He says he’s seen the 2 wettest years, the 2 driest years and 3 consecutive years of early and midseason drought, all within the past 6 years! 

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to discuss ways to weatherproof your farm, which was the theme of this field day hosted by Stute last week. Local farmers interested in learning more about conservation practices got a crash course on planting green.  

“Planting green is planting into the standing crop and then terminating when appropriate. That’s based on soil moisture. The beautiful thing about that green, rooted vegetation is it keeps all the alliances bolted on our planters to help us no-till. So, we’ve got the residue management system up front, the closing wheels back. It keeps the soil from building up, even if the soil is a little tacky on the front. In conventional no-till, that’s something we need to be concerned about, and one of the pitfalls of early equipment was the buildup of the soil.”

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.