Timeline – Jacob Roark – Growing Connections

Jacob Roark posted an update

Absolute failure.

This field was wheat in 2023. Has been no till since 2021. I drilled rye into the stubble in the fall of 2023.

Spring 2024 had a good stand but it was wet and cold so I didn’t get beans planted until the first week of june and the rye was 8 ft tall. Had to plant into it pretty wet because with the rye the soil just wouldn’t dry out. The beans weren’t spectacular, but with herbicide and tillage savings I penciled it as being about as profitable as my average for tilled fields.

Spring 2025 and I was feeling pretty good about it. We hadn’t had much for snowfall and I had great soil armor out there from the rye residue. Started planting corn the last week of April on my tilled fields. We had days of 100 degree temps coming so I pulled the trigger and planted this one too. I was feeling great because the no-till had moisture, and with multiple fays of over 100 and 40 mile hour winds, i felt my aoild.anf moisture on that field was far more protected than any other field in the area.

Then it turned cold. And rained 2 inches. My tilled fields made it through being able to soak up the sunshine with the black dirt. The no-till corn germinated, then died before emergence.

So after chalking it up to being too aggressive on planting dates, and Channel was covering the seed for replant, I replanted the entire field the last week of May. Then we got 5 inches of rain the second week of June and the same thing happened.

So this field that two months ago I was so excited about is going to be a total loss after planting it twice. And now the weeds are coming.

Meanwhile , my tilled fields are a little drowned out in low areas, but otherwise fine.

Sure it’s mostly just bad luck, but I guess I’m feeling like this system just doesn’t have the tolerance or tools to deal with some of the extreme spring weather that we seem to get and after loosing an entire field, I’m pretty unsure where to go from here.

2 Comments
- Jacob Roark
  
  I tried to upload pics, but they fail every time for some reason.
  
  a day ago
- David Kruger
  
  Jacob this field still had a big amount of rye residue that was kill after planting beans in June of 2024?
  
  I have been no tilling into wheat stubble for 30 years and have never experienced a spring like this as far as the amount of residue, tremendous residue. I was excited also to have such great cover but also was concerned about the soil temps. Usually these field would have went to corn but since I had so many acres of pp from 2024 I put corn on the pp ground and decided to go to beans on all but one of the wheat stubble fields. My story is not as serious as yours as inter seeding beans middle of June has more hope than 2 corn plantings and still nothing. Ground just didn’t get warm until June 20. When I replanted beans on the 15 the ground temp was 59-60 2 inches down in the middle of the day.
  
  My thoughts on what caused my issues was 100 bushel wheat straw that saw no rain from Aug of 2024 until may of 2025. It didn’t break down at all because of the dry weather and the. The cold May and first half of June never allowed the soil to warm with that cover, then 12 inches of rain in June hasn’t done any favors either.
  
  I don’t understand but you and I have both experienced similar problems planting green and it staying wetter in the standing rye as compared to the soil not growing the crop beside it. Makes no sense but I understand your frustration.
  
  I’ll give you a call in the next few days and we will have to see if we can figure out something to move forward.
  
  3 hours ago