MATT MILES - MCGEHEE, ARKANSAS
Matt Miles is a fourth-generation farmer in southeast Arkansas who grows corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton.
Hectic and stressful is how I would describe the last few weeks. Although we have had a scarce amount of planting days, we have gotten a lot done during those days. We are done planting corn and finished with about 90% of our soybeans. We started planting cotton last week as well.
Today we are running four planters and three sprayers and hopefully can get the rice drill started this week. We always learn the things we should have done differently from year to year.
For example, I always wait to spray my corn until around V4-5 stage with Halex GT and Atrazine. This year with all the rain and most days being too windy to spray, that turns out to be a mistake. Some of the winter vegetation broke through at the same time as the corn. Even though it will eventually play itself out of the equation, it has been competitive with my corn at the early stages. It’s normally not a problem, but this year has been wetter for more days than I ever remember. We can clean it up and it will be fine, but it sure does look ugly in the process. I feel like I’m planting into a green cover crop sometimes. We brought in an airplane last week to spray some of it down.
My biggest concern today is available cotton seed. I’m still waiting on some of the seed I ordered in the winter. The companies are waiting on it to break dormancy and for the cold test germ test. Hopefully I don’t have to stop planting because of lack of seed. Stay safe, get rest, and good luck with this planting season.
