Last weekend’s heavy rains and the surface crusting that followed will have many farmers thinking about replant. When should you make that decision? Purdue Extension Corn Specialist Bob Nielsen and Extension Soybean Specialist Shaun Casteel discuss that in the latest Purdue Crop Chat Podcast found below.
Nielsen says there isn’t a black and white decision-making formula for corn.
“I think ideally, in practice I would wait until the first emergers are clearly at late emergence or just barely at the V1. If you’ve still got blanks in the row, that’s sort of a tell-tale sign there. Because even if they do emerge at that point, they’re going to be one or two leaves behind in development and then they, in essence, don’t contribute much to yield. Again, I wish there were a black and white way to say, ‘OK, if I don’t have 90% of them up by today, I’m going to pull the trigger,’ but it’s never quite that clear cut.”
Casteel says that decision is a bit easier for soybeans.
“I’d say V2 is a fairly common stage for people to make the call of doing a replant, and I dare say that is too late. We need to be making the call VC to V1, and that’s because those soybean plants have already detected the light quality around it, essentially the shading, and if we’ve got a decent stand, 70,000 or above, at VC we’re good. But if it’s less than that, and you start digging up and they’re going to be a delayed emerger another week or two, yeah I think we need to be making that call.”
Again, hear more of this discussion in the Purdue Crop Chat Podcast below.