CENTRAL ILLINOIS (WCIA) — United Prairie’s corn plot was planted earlier this month, and chief agronomist Kyle Meece put in soybean test plots over the past several days.

“This planter’s going to be the one, we’re doing 30-inch row beans, but we’re looking at some different in-furrow studies on beans,” Meece said. “We’re looking at some 2×2 stuff, trying to better place sulfur, for one. Sulfur has been a crucial element we’ve been looking at on corn, but how does that look on beans, and how does that right placement of it, we had the 4-wheeler rig out here yesterday getting some AMS comparison versus ammonium thiosulfate 2 X 2, versus ammonium thiosulfate broadcast with a sprayer over the top, trying to look at the same rate, same rate of nitrogen, but with three different forms of application with different products. We ‘ve got our seed treatment trials. Our seed team has done a phenomenal job, getting different treatments over the years. What’s new in the industry and got some of that planted here, we planted these, we planted these last week, we finished up Thursday night. It’s Tuesday the 17th, yesterday we were out here the beans came up in 4 days.

You put some fertilizer on them?

“We got some fertilizer on some of this stuff, we try to eliminate as many limiting factors as we can out here, but even the in-furrow stuff, I couldn’t believe when we came out here and saw these beans out of the ground,” Meece said. “Still, we didn’t lay them on top they were planted in decent moisture and inch, inch and a quarter in the ground.”

Kyle Meece said he and United Prairie General Manager Curt Miller estimate how fast the local crop had been planted, and the fact it benefited from growing degree units.

Curt and I were talking we figured probably 50-percent of the corn went in the last 7 days, that’s not counting the probably 20-percent that went in ahead of that,” Meece said. “And I will bet we are at 30-40% beans. You know I was worried at first, we were getting delayed, but mother nature went from 60-70 degree highs to 90 degree highs for 4 or 5 days and we had some extreme GDU accumulation. I’m not so sure some of the corn and beans that we planted, they are probably going to catch up with what we planted 3-4 weeks earlier. What we were planting through the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th of May, may have been the same as like planting it in the 3rd or 4th week of April. Because how often have we collected that kind of GDUs in the month of May. Pretty rarely.”

That’s our report from the farm. I’m Stu Ellis with WCIA-3, your local news leader.