VIDALIA — The time has come or, depending on the crop, is approaching for farmers to head to the fields.

But before they can begin planting, farmers need to prepare their fields.

For David Yates, who is growing corn, that field preparation began in the fall.

“That’s when you row up the land and, if you need to deep till it to allow for the corn to reach deep down and get moisture during the spring and summer, deep till it,” Yates said.

Deep tilling isn’t necessary unless you are farming a plot of hard ground, Yates said.

When the spring comes, it’s time to burn down the weeds that have grown up and start planting.

The process is similar for soybeans, Vidalia Farmer Tim Welch said.

“With the beans we have done all of our work in the fall, gotten the ground ready and applied the burn down to clean it up,” Welch said. “We are just waiting for it to dry out to go in and plant.”

But the ground doesn’t require a lot of work for beans.

“You don’t have to put any fertilizer out for beans,” Welch said. “If the ground was torn up during harvest, we will go in and break it up, smooth it down and just leave it.”

From there, soybeans are an easy crop — you basically just watch them grow.

Corn, however, is a different story.

“As you plant, you plant your seed with your starter fertilizer, Yates said. “Later on you come in and (fertilize it more) with liquid nitrogen.”

As the plants emerge, it’s time to apply pest-killing chemicals.

But that’s a step that may be vanishing, Yates said.

“A lot of genetically-modified corn has insecticide already in the seed for different worms, and some of it has been modified to withstand Roundup without dying,” he said.

The genetically modified seeds are more expensive initially, but they save time and energy, Yates said.

While Yates has already planted his corn, Welch said he will wait until April to begin soybean and rice planting.

With the rice, as soon as the ground dries he will go in and break the ground and put down pre-planting fertilizer and weed control chemicals before putting in the dry seed.

From there, the plan is to either get a rain or put in a flush of water to start the rice growing, Welch said.

Once the rice comes up, he will apply more fertilizer and another round of chemicals.

“After that we put in a permanent flood on the field through the growing season,” he said.

As for Yates, he said he’s glad that he got an early start planting corn this year when he put planted in late February. In fact, it’s the earliest start he’s ever gotten.

“It was a little warmer there for a while, and now we have gotten all of this rain and it’s already April,” he said. “If you didn’t get started then, then you would be late now.”