From the Fields: Easy wheat harvest

It seems like it’s forgotten to rain in the month of June for the last few years. It was great weather for wheat harvest. It went very well. It was about as easy as a wheat harvest can get because the weather was so warm and dry. We had all those hot, windy days so it dried down very quickly, the grain moisture did, and ground conditions were dry, so we weren’t dragging combines and grain carts through mud.

Most of the wheat in our area ends up at Siemer Milling, and listening to those folks, it sounded like it was a very average crop for people, average yields. Average yields in our area are probably 80 to 100 bushels per acre. We were just a couple of bushels above our average. Since I’ve been growing wheat, our average is 98 bushels per acre and we were at 101.

We were able to get our second-crop beans planted and we had just enough moisture to get those to germinate. If you’re planting into bone-dry conditions, it doesn’t make any difference what the plant date is — it’s more, what’s your germination date? We were able to get them to germinate. We had a couple of light rains, so that has kept the ground moist enough that they germinated.

One other nice thing this year was wheat harvest was at least seven to 10 days earlier than normal, so that is nice. That means double crops have a lot better yield potential for us — just that extra seven to 10 days is a big impact for us.