Air May 23, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Okay, I don’t know what the weather is going to do from one week to the next. We were setting record high temperatures last week, and flirting with record lows this week. All I know is that they are still saying that summer has a chance of being cooler and wetter than normal. I hope they are right on that count!

One of the hardest decisions to make at this time of year is whether or not to replant. If you’ve got an absolute bust, then there is no question. But sometimes you get that stand that looks like it’s really on the edge. And the longer you look at it the worse it gets. Part of the problem is that we always plant more seed than we need. We assume that we are not going to have a 100% stand. But then we get an 85% stand and it looks great and we start thinking that this is what we need to have. We drop 7 or 8 milo seeds per foot of row hoping to get at least 6 plants per foot. Yet we know that if you have two plants per foot of row, you have an adequate enough stand to leave it. If most of you went out and saw only two milo plants per foot of row, you’d have the planter filled for a replant so fast it would make our heads spin. Yet you don’t need to replant. Sure, you may think it looks bad, compared to what you are used to, but you can’t improve yield enough to justify the replant. Soybeans get even trickier. Let’s say you’re shooting for an ideal stand of drilled soybeans. You drop about 220,000 seeds per acre and you’re hoping for about 150,000 plants per acre. But then you get some crusting action and some slow emerging beans and you think that you just don’t have nearly enough plants. You do some stand counts and instead of 150,000 plants per acre, you’ve only got about 80,000 plants. It looks bad, they’re talking about you at the coffee shop and the whole situation is tearing you to pieces. Remember the old saying that talk is cheap. We know that the kind of loss in stand like I’ve just described is going to reduce yield. It might reduce it by as much as 4%. That’s the number 4, no zero after it or 1 before it. 1, 2, 3, 4% percent. If you think you might have had 50 bushel beans, you’ll lose a maximum of 2 bushels. Will 2 bushels of $4 beans pay for a replant? I don’t think so. That’ll only cover the cost of running the tractor. Don’t rush into any replanting decision based on what you’re afraid the coffee shop will say. Base your replant decisions on economics!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page