When planting, its important to check soil moisture levels in the seed zone regularly.
There are three options:
- planting dry and watering up (cools the soil and crop establishment is rapid),
- pre-irrigation (may be preferred when the soil is very dry and temperatures are high, and when there's a large seed bank of difficult to control weeds), or
- planting on rain moisture (done by dryland growers; many irrigators also aim to do this to save water)