Planting progress and stand assessments
Strategic Farming Field Notes session. These sessions are brought to you by Extension and generous support from the Minnesota Slaving Research and Promotion Council and the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council. We're happy that you've joined us today our session on planting progress and stand assessment. I'm Liz Stahl, Extension Educator and Crops out of the Worthington Regional Office. And today we have Doctor.
Liz Stahl:Jeff Coulter, he's our U of M Extension Corn Agronomist, and Doctor Seth Naeve, he's our U of M Extension Soybean Agronomist. So before I turn it over to them, I just wanted to give a little update on where we're at with planting from the USDA National Ag Statistics Service. They've got the statewide report here. So as of May 19, that's when this last report came out.
Liz Stahl:Corn was at 92% planted. That's about ten days sooner than the five year average with 58% emerged. That's about six days ahead of average. And then soybeans, those are about 81% planted about ten days earlier than average with 32% emerged. So that's about six days ahead of that five year average.
Liz Stahl:So anyway, first I'll turn it over to you, Jeff. How are things looking here with corn planting and progress? Again, it looks like we're ahead of ahead of our five year average. Have you heard of any issues or, anything? Are we off to a good start here for the season?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah. Good morning, Liz. Well, I think things are looking pretty good overall. You know, it was everything started off kind of early. We had that first planting window, April '16.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Some farmers were able to get in the field then, but some of that corn that was planted early ended up having to be replanted. It ended up getting wet and cold afterwards, and that impacted those stands. And then a lot of farmers were kind of out of the field until around May 5, and then since May 5 it's been you know going like gangbusters getting it all in. So very warm temperatures in May, which were very good for facilitating quick planting and very fast emergence. A lot of this corn emerged in like six days after planting in May when we had all these warm temperatures.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:So other than the need to replant a lot of that stuff that was planted in that first planting window, especially if it was, say, in corn following corn and on fine textured soils, things are looking pretty good. You know, this rain has been a great help, so that's gonna carry us quite a ways. We faced a few challenges. You know, one of them has been all the sandblasting that we've had recently, this blowing soil. You know, that's a challenge whenever we have dry conditions which started from the fall.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:So if we wanna think about, you know, what could we do to potentially limit this in future years, things like, having more surface residue there. So thinking about maybe do we need to be doing tillage in the fall on soybean stubble, or can we just delay that till spring? That's one one thing to think about. Another thing to think about is, soil moisture. So if we're doing tillage when the soil is dry, it's going to have a harder time holding together, and sometimes it can kind of turn into powder.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:And then when we get to springtime, that's gonna be more susceptible to blowing around. Another issue with that, sandblasting is, you know, we think about the disc grippers and the field cultivators that we have now, and a lot of them have rolling baskets on the end of them. And, some people refer to those as crumblers, and that's what they do. They crumble the soil into smaller particles and, basically destroy that soil structure. So when there's not a lot of surface residue there and we have a crumbler going over the soil that's gonna break that down, break those aggregates down, and, make them more susceptible to to blowing around, smaller soil particles.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:So if we can maybe think about those things and maybe think about what we can do in future years, maybe we can try to limit that a little bit. So that sandblasting has taken some damage on the corn. It looks pretty tough in some areas. It's kind of similar to what we would see if we have like a hail or frost event in some cases. We may see a little bit of buggy whipping on the plants where as the plant is trying to grow, that dead tissue is stuck kind of in the plant and it just needs some wind and some some heat so that it can grow and have that new tissue push it out.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:So it may take a few days for that to perk up, but should be very minimal, impact on yield is what we would expect based on what we know, from previous research that's been done looking at hail simulation in corn.
Liz Stahl:Yeah, excellent point about that wind blowing. Boy that was really prevalent. Know at least in our area again I'm in Southwestern Minnesota across Southern Minnesota. But just curious you know you talked about stands. If people are looking at stands, what kind of stands are okay?
Liz Stahl:You know, that's always a big question of when to replan and when not. You know, where's that window where you think they're going to be okay?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah, generally like around the low 20 thousands is kind of like the cutoff. So we get below like around 22,000 then it starts to get kind of we probably need to be thinking about replanting and if it gets to 20,000 or less probably definitely we need to be thinking about replanting. But it's always important to run the numbers for your given scenario, think about when did you plant that first crop, what is the expected yield potential with that reduced stand, and then compare that to when you think you'd be able to get into the field and what you expect the yield to be on the replant. And just realizing now that if we replant say tomorrow, we're already in the window and we need to be kind of reducing the relative maturities. So planting between May 22 and May 28, we suggest, reducing the relative maturity of the corn hybrid to about five to seven units earlier than full season for your area.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:And then when we get to May 29 to June 4, then we're recommending eight to 15 relative maturity units earlier than full season for your area. And then between June 5 and June 10, we're suggesting 15 or more relative maturity units earlier than full season. So just a reminder to keep an eye on the calendar and the need to reduce relative maturity units when you replant.
Liz Stahl:Well, that's a good point. And one thing I should add too, course, when we're talking about injury, with a sandblasting and that, I mean that growing point still below the ground, right? On most of these crops. So I mean, even if you lose a lot of tissue at this point, if that growing points below the ground where we should still be okay with those plants right or or other concerns you've got with that?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah, the growing point on corn is below the soil surface until about the V5 stage when the corn's about say twelve fourteen inches tall. So, corn will grow grow back just fine at this point.
Liz Stahl:Okay, that's great. And we do have a lot of nice resources online on our Extension, website. You know, just go under our corn page and we do have a lot of information on replant and sand assessment there too and the effects of planting date as well. So Seth, I'll turn it over to you too. Just kind of get your take on, you know, how are things looking here with soybean planting too?
Liz Stahl:It looks like we're, you know, ahead as well when we look at that long term average. What have you been hearing about crop progress and across the state? Any issues you've heard of as well? Are we off to a good start here?
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah, I would just say ditto on everything from Jeff on the soybean side. I think it mirrors soybean almost exactly. I think if you think just about the progress, yeah, we on a couple, aspects, I think we're about a week ahead of, average for planting and emergence progress across the state. It's it's a little surprising to me that we don't even have better emergence considering the warm temperatures we've had. The soybeans that I planted early you know, we got some good early late April, early May plantings, and those are definitely developmentally.
Dr. Seth Naeve:Those are as far ahead as I've ever had for soybeans at this time. And, you know, just a reminder that that's that's really the important part about planting early is the emergence date. And so if we plant super early, they take three and four weeks to come out of the ground, it really doesn't do us any, it doesn't provide us a lot of benefit. And that's that's probably why we have somewhat of a reduced, a limited planting, you know, benefit from very early planting in soybean is simply because of the the emergence takes so long to get out. So yeah.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And and, you know, we made about 30%, progress last week. So just, just before this rain, we had about 30% of the state soybean crop was planted from 51 to 80 52 to 81% in the previous week. So that was a third of our soybeans got in right before this rainfall. So, you know, that covers a lot of sins, and that'll that'll take care of us, a lot of farmers in in terms of potential problems. The rains came really nice in the southern half of Minnesota, so we've had a couple inches across a lot of the state in three or so days.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And so it's it's just perfect. I'm out today. I'm I'm just outside of the cities, Southwest of the cities this morning, and and, there's we don't see any ponding at all. There's nothing really even standing in wheel tracks. So the ground was dry.
Dr. Seth Naeve:It was it was opened up. The water all infiltrated. We didn't have movement of water, and very little little ponding out there, today. So I think I think this is almost in in many ways, it was almost an ideal spring. As Jeff mentioned, we had this really nice window in really early April to get things rolling, and I talked to a number of farmers that were that were planting both corn and soybeans or soybeans first.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And so, you know, this is a great audience, so I know there's a lot of interaction. So, hopefully, we can hear from a few people, online about some experience in their area with some of those really early planted soybeans and corn and whether those had to be replanted or not and how the soybeans look relative to the corn, in those and how those farmers feel about some of that really early planting. One of the farmers I've talked to, he had a window to plant early, and so they went all in with their beans. And then the rains came, and they were held out for two weeks. And so I think they basically got all their beans planted in in April and then their corn in early May.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And I haven't asked his opinion about how he feels about that today, but, I'm I'm kinda curious in retrospect how how folks feel about it. I was out this winter, talked a lot about planting date, and I it seems a little bit late to talk about yield effects on planting date, but I think in retrospect, people are still thinking about this. And so what what is the impact of it? And Bruce Potter and I and Anibal Seruto just published a really nice paper that pulled in Bruce Potter's data for the last twenty five years and planting data at, Lamberton. So it's one location where we looked at twenty five consecutive years of planting date studies there and basically found point 15% loss per day.
Dr. Seth Naeve:So that's one and a half percentage points per ten days. So, you know, more than a bushel in ten days, but not a huge planting advantage for early planting, and that goes all the way through the May. It's pretty linear all the way from mid April all the way out through, late in late in May. So there isn't a huge penalty. And in fact, you know, the only caveats to it just to run this thing completely into the ground is that farmers needed, they could get a little bit more benefit if they planted a good, long, full season variety early.
Dr. Seth Naeve:If they planted a short season variety, that diminished that, that, yield response to early planting. And, likewise, if we had a tough year, if it was a dry year or if we had any other challenges in the field and and that limited yields, that basically erased that early planting benefit. So, of course, farmers are planning on having, having record yields each year, and they need to do that. But just understand that there's a lot of instances when that early planting, may not actually benefit them as much they hoped if their if their yields are capped by other factors. So so I'll quit there, and, hopefully, we can have some questions and some some, some dialogue about this early planting and how the how the crop looks this year.
Dr. Seth Naeve:I I'm I'm happy because I think most farmers are gonna be fairly happy with the way things look and and how this, how the environment treated us this year.
Liz Stahl:Yeah. Well, I mean, you're right, Seth. It's for years, I never would have heard somebody trying to plant soybeans first, know, then before corn, but there's been a lot more acres going out and, and yeah, it'll be interesting. I just do, I do think this year we were pretty fortunate to get most of the crop in before we started to get a yield hit, know, due to late planting and both crops. But I did want to ask you too about something that Jeff had talked about was all this, you know, man, we had some major dust storms blowing across the area too.
Liz Stahl:Now, what have you heard on the soybean side with that? Any areas where this has been injurious, you know, concern, you know, recommendations you have to try to not have this happen again. Are we should we be concerned about this? I mean, it concerns me, but just get your take on this.
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah, we absolutely have to be concerned about it. It's a real it's it's a real problem out there. It's a personal disaster for farmers when they have to replant because of cut off crops, but it it, it causes a long term economic problem. You've got movement of soil, but everything with the soil, including herbicides and and, other things that are moving with that soil. And then it it just causes us a black eye to, you know, as as environmentalists, we have to do a better job of of raising a crop and reducing some of these problems out there because it it doesn't fare well for us with our with our urban cousins, and to show that, you know, we need to demonstrate that we're doing a good job.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And and most farmers are, but there's some that aren't. The the honest truth is that there's just risk involved with all of the the actions that we take as as farmers, and, you know, we're constantly balancing the various things. And Jeff mentioned, you know, soil finishing and things like that. And on the soybean side, these rollers are causing us big problems where we don't have residue as well. So I think farmers just have to look very carefully at their operations and try to minimize these these risks because these aren't one in a hundred year things.
Dr. Seth Naeve:These are these are things that we've, you know, experienced over, sequentially over a lot of years, so I think we just have to do a better job. On the agronomic side, aside from all the, the the the larger philosophical issues, I think it's just important to remember the farm the soybeans, the growing points at the top of the plant. So we just have to take a look at that plant and see what the damage is at the top of the plant. It's like, you know, we're we don't have the luxury of corn where it can just pop up from below the soil again. So, if that growing point's taken out in soybean and there's no green tissue left, it's dead.
Dr. Seth Naeve:So we're gonna have to have to, replant. But, again, on this planting date yield thing, there's a lot of opportunity to be really have very good yields in soybeans yet. So we're not at the, you know, there's a there's a little bit more opportunity to plant soybeans and replant soybeans, replant soybeans at a lower cost, and that's really my only angle on early planting soybeans is that that that the risk is a little bit lower for and replant risks and costs for replants are a little bit lower than corn. So it's take a good take a careful look at your soybean stands. Soybeans can maintain very, very good yields at very low stands, but I think we need to have we need to make sure that we have, you know, 80 to a hundred thousand plants field wide, and there aren't any areas in that field that are lower because then those those yield those areas will suffer.
Dr. Seth Naeve:So we might have to spike in some soybeans or replant in those areas.
Liz Stahl:Right. And again, we do have a lot of nice resources online for both corn and soybeans on replanting. You can again, you can just find those through our Extension crops website. We have a comment here too. Somebody was wondering about if the vertical tilled fields blew worse.
Liz Stahl:I don't know if either of you have any comments on that. I do know, of course, cover crops can help. Wind breaks can help. A lot of those have gotten wiped out due to emerald ash borer around here, but hopefully windbreaks will come back again. But, yeah, I don't know if you've seen anything, about certain tilled fields or if rolled fields blew worse too, or not.
Dr. Seth Naeve:I would I would just throw in the reminder that I think it's easy to categorize things as vertical tilled or not or rolled or not. The big driver here is how much residue there was before those operations. And so if there's a lot of residue, there's a lot of cushion, there's a lot of buffering for any of these problems. You those are two implements that tend to work really well when there's quite a bit of residue, but the risks are very high when there's not very much residue. And so using those kind of things across whole fields where we might have drowned out spots or we might have other issues in some areas or or poor stands from last year's drought where we have low residue, those areas can really be bad.
Dr. Seth Naeve:So I would say that I think the residue is, in many cases, is a bigger issue for the impact of those kind of things than the actual tool themselves.
Liz Stahl:Here's a question we had too. Jeff, you had mentioned that we might have to do some replanting areas. Do you have any comments about seed supply on early maturities? Have you heard anything about availability on those yet or where we're at with that?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:I think that's just something farmers are going to need to check with their seed suppliers on and find out what is available and the different maturity groups and what tray packages they have.
Liz Stahl:Okay. And, we did have another comment in here too, checking my population stance, how good of a planning job was accomplished in regards to plant spacing, skips, and what is acceptable. So I think this is a good question for you too, Jeff, and I can send this over to Seth as well. But yeah, any comments about the spacing skips and so forth? What might be causing those if people are seeing that?
Liz Stahl:What impacts what might we have on that?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah. There's been a lot of research in corn on plant spacing and how that affects yield. And the bottom line is that the within row plant spacing really doesn't have much of an effect on yield. And if we're looking at replanting, you know, obviously we want to have picket fence spacing within the row if we can, but if we don't it's really not going to impact yield much. And when we're thinking about replanting, we can take, gaps up almost two feet without having a severe impact.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:I mean it's going to reduce the population for sure, but, as long as our gaps in our the stand that we need to replant aren't more than two feet, then, we can kind of still count those plants and assume it's that population is kind of relatively equally spread out amongst the field. Once we start to get gaps over two feet, then we need to probably deduct a little more, percent from the projected yield when we're taking into account that the potential yield of that that stand that's poor.
Liz Stahl:Great. Yeah. Steph, how about in soybeans? How do they handle these gaps and areas if we have that?
Dr. Seth Naeve:Even better than corn. So I know this is this is kind of one of those funny topics that I I think it's a good example of some agronomists and and, equipment, folks that really appeal to farmers' senses of aesthetics. And we all love these fields that have perfect spacing, and we feel really good about them because they look beautiful. But the plants are really flexible. They're built to work across populations.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And if if you think about it, those individual plants don't need a perfect cylinder of space to occupy. They can work off of one way or another. They've they've evolved to move leaves around and and best utilize both the, space above the plants as well as the soil to utilize that, to their best advantage individually. And then as a as a whole, as that whole canopy develops, they're gonna do quite well. So it's really, really highly oversold, this idea.
Dr. Seth Naeve:But, of course, if we have really big skips and gaps, there will be problems. But soybeans is gonna be a little like corn. It's a foot a foot or more between those gaps before we have real problems.
Liz Stahl:Yeah. And we had a comment or a question come in here too about seed So in a year like this where we had rapid emergence early in the season, what do think? Do you think the benefits of seed treatments were diminished this year? Any thoughts on that?
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah, I'll go with this one with soybean is that I'll repeat, I think, what Bruce Potter's wisdom, I think, works well in this situation is that he and I did a lot of seed treatment over years and years and years. We had trouble getting positive results for seed treatments when we planted late, and we think that it's because the beans just popped out of the ground and weren't really benefited by the those active ingredients. On the other hand, when we planted really early into tough conditions and it took three weeks or more, we really think that in many cases, we outlive the active ingredients of those products, and we didn't see results. And so there is clear value in or there's clear evidence that seed treatments work really well when you plant and then you get another inch of rain after that, and it's probably due to movement of that product off of the seed into this into the profile. But these are things you can't predict, and so it's not particularly useful information to have.
Dr. Seth Naeve:But it it does demonstrate a little bit that seed treatments kind of have to have the planets kinda have to align for them to be really highly functional, and so that's why they work sometimes, and and in in many cases, they don't really do much for us.
Liz Stahl:Any comments you wanna share too, Jeff? Because, of course, a lot of our corn is treated as well, unless you're an organic farmer. But, any comments there with seed treatments?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah, you know, it was planted in May during that warm period and emerged six days later, you know, obviously there was less time for that seed to sit in the soil and less potential for damage. So yeah, that makes sense that when we have rapid emergence there's likely going to be less of a benefit to the seed treatment.
Liz Stahl:And we have one here. They want you to get your crystal ball out here. With day length sensitive plants how early can we expect harvest start with soybeans? What do you think? Are we on track here for an earlier harvest year?
Liz Stahl:I'm guessing this probably would be more towards you, Seth here.
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah. It's, you know, it's all dependent on what happens late in the year. Yes. Did get off to a good start, and so these early season, temperatures have really only a small modification on the phenology of the plant. So it's only gonna affect it just a a little bit.
Dr. Seth Naeve:So, you know, I guess it's kind of a pad answer for me, but, you know, wait until August, September, and that'll tell us a lot. But it does set us up. This is one of those years that will these long long season varieties, these where we're pushing maturities a little bit heavier, probably will end up doing better, you know, unless, of course, we have, you know, very early frost or other problems. So I'd I'd I would just say, yes. There's an opportunity for us to to start a little bit earlier, but it's gonna be very we're only talking about a day or two in the fall on average based on this early kind of, you know, one week a one week advancement in in emergence is probably only gonna give us a day at the end.
Dr. Seth Naeve:It's probably a a quicker, more concise way to put it.
Liz Stahl:Good point, good point here. Here Jeff this one is directed to you. Tar spot showed up early last year in many states any thoughts about watching and treatments this year? I know we'll have Dean Melvig on later another time but maybe you have some comments about this as well.
Dr. Jeff Coulter:Yeah. So, you know, the areas that have seen it the last couple years, those would be areas that we wanna be keeping an eye out for and, watching those areas. And if we have it, we want to, you know, get after it. And, in a lot of cases, it was like two foliar fungicide applications beginning at tasseling and then, one a little bit later were kind of optimal. So, if we had it last year, there's a good chance we're we're probably gonna have it again this year, so I'd be watching for it.
Liz Stahl:Alright. We had one more question come in here too about the blowing fields. A lot of corn stalks and ditches, which is residue, you know, and we think mostly from reduced tiller rolled fields isn't surface roughness also big factor, maybe the biggest factor, which can be achieved by tillage type as well as residue. So a little bit of a question in there, but yeah, surface roughness playing a factor kind of plays with what you're talking about, Seth, with the rolling of fields in that too. I know we've had more residue blowing off of fields in those situations, I think.
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah. Surface roughness is is a huge factor for this. It's it it definitely affects that kinda laminar flow of that that air right at the surface and has a has a it's gonna have a large effect not only on how much blowing we have, but if we have cutoffs and things like that. That will roughness is will actually save the crop from, any existing sandblasting, or there's an opportunity for it to help save us from sandblasting just because of that roughness factor within the field even if everything else is the same. So it plays a big factor.
Dr. Seth Naeve:And so I think, again, I think this farmer should think about their planting operation and getting their seed into this perfect environment down in the furrow. But what happens above that seed has has really relatively small effect on on its, you know, emergence and early season growth. So we don't have to, you know, have this this perfect flat field out there that's been completely crumbled up and and pressed down. You know, I know that harvest that helps with harvest in the soybean side, but I think the the visual side of that field is a little bit different than what that seed experiences down in the ground. And so I think the farmers should be more concerned about what's happening underground with that seed and make sure they get it in the right spot with the right soil conditions down there.
Liz Stahl:All right, well I'm looking at the time here we are up with our time. Any last comments from you Jeff or Seth? Anything you want to say that we haven't said yet?
Dr. Jeff Coulter:No, I don't have anything else.
Liz Stahl:Okay, Seth did you get everything you wanted to say in here too?
Dr. Seth Naeve:Yeah we didn't say anything about herbicides but that's the other thing that we got we had some time for this year and so I think that's that's you know it's weed control is one of the biggest problems for farmers and so having an opportunity to get preemergence herbicides down, in a year like this and then having rains come to get those things activated may be one of the biggest, if not, you know, economic and yield saving factors, but certainly one of the things that's going to reduce the angst among the farmers this year in dealing with those weeds. I think we have an opportunity for a really good looking crop this year by the way we're set up.
Liz Stahl:That's a great way to wrap it up here for today. So again I'd like to thank our speakers today Seth Naeem and Jeff Coulter. And again, thank everybody for attending today. Also thank our sponsors of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council and the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council. And a reminder, hope you can join us next week.
Liz Stahl:We will be talking about tips for forage and pasture management around insects pests production and harvesting. So again hope everybody has a great rest of the week and thanks for attending.
