Production Blog

Planting is a Precise Art

Planters will be rolling sooner than you think. Just don't rush the season too much. (DTN photo by Pamela Smith)

DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- We plan all year for planting season. Nothing in the crop world is more important than getting each seed placed correctly into the right field conditions for the very best start possible.

We watch that crop grow all summer with an eye toward what we will do differently next planting season. The same goes for harvest -- while we celebrate or complain of yield the thought is always about how we'll tweak the process the following year. The winter is (or should be) spent fine-tuning the planting plan.

The importance of this special season was on the mind of our staff all last year as we put together a special editorial focus called "The Art of Planting." It's hard to imagine with snow blanketing much of the country, but planters will start to roll in less than a month in some regions. The articles we'll post over the next several days will likely give you the itch to get started and provide some fertile ground for new thoughts.

I'm lucky enough to have many trusted advisers on the crops beat and they tend to be those who can endure a constant barrage of questions and are willing to get their boots dirty. One favorite is Purdue University agronomist Bob Nielsen and last summer I talked him into taking time to go to the field to discuss planting in preparation for this series.

"A wise agriculturalist once told me that the sins of planting will haunt you all season," said Nelson. "The mistakes made during the planting operation are usually permanent, unless you decide to replant the field at a later date. The effects of uneven or variable stand establishment on the yield potential of corn are also permanent and begin very early in the growing season."

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There's hardly anything more beautiful than a field of newly emerged seedlings. The problem is closer inspection often reveals the stand is not as uniform as it might appear.

"Yield losses can easily be as much as 7 to 15 bushels per acre due to combinations of uneven within-row plant spacing or uneven [corn] seedling emergence," Nielsen said.

Small gaps will always occur since warm germination percentage of seed corn typically ranges from 90% to 95%. The goal is to further avoid reducing final stands. Plant spacing variability is often blamed on misadjusted planter mechanisms, but Nielsen said growers tend to underestimate the importance of planting into the right conditions.

The biggest planting sin is rushing the season. "Adequate moisture and soil temperature and good seed-to-soil contact sound easy, but growers find it hard to wait, especially when they have a lot of acres to cover, especially if the previous season didn't cooperate," Nielsen said. "I don't care when you plant, just recognize the risk and consequences of cold soil temperatures. The slower the plant is to emerge, the more risk there is of disease coming in and taking out young plants."

There's been plenty of science put into the planting process over the past two decades. We've gone from using a coffee can to transfer corn from one hopper to the next to knowing precisely how much seed is going into each row and at how much pressure. New planters give growers the chance to change seeds on the go based on soil conditions, fertility and yield history. Speedy new planting systems rolled out this year. You'll read about many of those innovations in The Art of Planting series.

"So is there any art left in the process?" I asked Nielsen after we'd talked of such corny things as growing degree days, leaf collars establishment and nodal roots.

The July breeze was laden with the heady scent of corn pollen. Before answering, the scientist breathed deeply in what seemed an effort to filter the facts from the finesse.

"Being able to know when the land is fit for planting and making the tweaks to place the seed just right -- that's a real art that comes from experience, attention to detail and ... a certain amount of luck," he said.


(To see some of Nielsen's work on seeding rates, see http://bit.ly/… and http://bit.ly/…)

Pamela Smith can be reached at Pamela.smith@dtn.com

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