Poor stand
Crop Tour and Replant Considerations
This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist with Nebraska Extension for Dodge and Washington Counties. Two days ago, I took the first crop tour of 2016. During this 175 mile crop tour, I covered the 9 major soil regions of Dodge and Washington counties. My goal was to assess current crop conditions and progress, highlight agronomic concerns, and help you the farmer do what you do, grow the 2016 crop. Corn emergence and plant population in some fields planted from April 13-17 were less than ideal. Fields were planted into dry soil during warm weather. Then, rain and cold weather set in from April 18 through April 21 that created stressful conditions. In case you were wondering, April 2016 was the third wettest April in Fremont in 123 year after 1944 and 1984.
Let’s discuss the steps in making a replant decision real quick. First, in the field we need to determine the current plant population, length of in-row gaps and evaluate non-emerged plants for possibility of emergence. Don’t just assess the best and worst areas of the field, but get a good random sample across the field. I would suggest taking plant counts in 1/1,000 of an acre or 17 ft 5 inches of row length in 30 inch rows in 10 random locations across the field and determine the plant population.
Second we need to determine the yield potential of replanted corn versus our current corn stand. I use the 2010 Iowa State University relative yield potential of corn by planting date and population table to do this. A link to this table can be found at our website at croptechcafe.org. If we have an average of 19,000 plants per acre with 2 foot gaps, we would expect roughly 85% of maximum yield with our April planting. If we replanted today, we are looking at roughly 87% of maximum yield assuming we get a good stand the second go-round. In this situation, it is unlikely there will be much of an advantage to replanting. If replanting occurs after May 25, we may only expect to get 70% of maximum yield and we are into the late planting period from May 26 to Jun 14 where we lose insurance coverage by 1 percent per day off of your production guarantee. Replant coverage with multi-peril crop insurance for 2016 is 8 bushels times the price election or roughly $31/acre. In most cases, you are often better off keeping your initial stand.
To learn more about other timely and local agronomic issue in our area, go ahead and view the pictures and read this week’s crop tour report at croptechcafe.org or give me a call at 402-727-2775. Know your crop, know your tech, know your bottom line. This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist with Nebraska Extension on KTIC radio.
