The arrival of spring brought snow and cold rather than warm weather. We got one really warm day in mid March at 31C, then cold weather culminating in 15cm of snow 10 days later. The new USDA drought maps show we have been downgraded from extreme drought to severe drought, meaning things are getting better, but not a lot better.

Grandad said the time to plant maize was “when the leaves on the hedges were as big as squirrels’ ears” – that appears to be some weeks away. I like to wait until it is warm enough for the maize to come right up and keep growing. The trend over the past 15 years has been to push planting dates earlier and earlier, last year a lot of maize was planted in March.

I have a 3600 Kinze planter, with a finger pickup for maize. The planter is very accurate and I consider it to be as near to perfect as anything I own. I drill maize in 30in (76cm) rows, dropping to about 24,000 seeds/acre (59,400/ha). The trend is toward higher populations, when I started farming in 1987 Grandad set the planter at 16,000 seeds/acre (39,600 seeds/ha).

In dry conditions, high populations lead to barren stalks. Grandad didn’t say anything when I moved to 18,000 seeds/acr but at 20,000 seeds/acr he and one of my elderly landlords told me “you’ll be in big trouble if it gets dry”. I’ve planted as high as 27,000 (66,830 seeds/ha) and found during drought years I had very poor yields and a lot of lodging because of the weak stems.

All of my corn will be glyphosate tolerant and some will be triple stacked with rootworm and corn borer resistance. Because of weed resistance to glyphosate, I will apply the pre-emergence herbicide Lexar (metolachlor + mesotrione + atrazine).

With three poor maize crops in a row, I hope 2013 will be better. So hopfully by my next column, the grass will be green and the maize drilled.

Brian Hind farms 1,250ha of prairie land in Greenwood county, Kansas, America, of which 770ha is family owned plus the rest is rented. Of this, 330ha is arable cropping with maize, soya, grain sorghum, alfalfa plus a mix of rye, triticale and turnips for grazing by 200 beef cattle. Grassland is used to produce hay.

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