I don't own a farm but I have been around farming all my life, born and raised on a farm, worked farm for brothers, in-laws, friends and neighbours.
We used to wait for the right soil temp, until one year. That year, spring was late, almost as late as this spring. So we changed our system.
We started spring work as soon as we could get on the land, and seeded right behind the cultivator. There were several days where we had enough frost that our disk markers wouldn't cut in. But we went ahead anyway.
Germination was spotty that year but we got a crop when a lot of people who waited for the land to warm up, didn't.
From then on we seeded as soon as we could, no matter the soil temps.
If spring was early we would wait a few extra days, but on average we seeded at least a week ahead of what we would have under our old method.
We found that on dry years we got better yields, on average years we got about the same as before, on late years we go a crop when others didn't.
In twenty years we only had two failures. Germination too poor. Those years we were early enough to reseed and still get a crop. And it didn't cost much since all the other spring field work was already done.
As my friend, and boss at the time, said. In the spring we can reseed, but if we seed late and get an early frost, the whole year is toast.
One other thing that we liked, most years we had our crops in the bin before that fall rains hit. For about half of those twenty years we were all done the harvest by September first. More then once we had the pleasure of being free to help a neighbour who was late with his harvest.
Each has good reasons for doing things the way they do. But maybe this year is the year to try something different. It could save your year.
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