S4E19: Planning for Planting

Recorded: 3/30/26 

As planting season approaches, preparation and decision-making can set the tone for the entire growing year. In this episode, the hosts invite Del Voight, Lebanon County Agronomy Extension Educator, to discuss key considerations for planting corn and soybeans. Topics include evaluating planting conditions, deciding how early to start planting, and optimizing planter setup for uniform emergence and strong early-season growth.

 Hosts: Ryan Spelman, Justin Brackenrich, and Dwane Miller, Penn State Extension
Guest: Del Voight, Penn State Extension

Links:
Planter and Drill Maintenance
Growing Corn and Corn Silage on a Budget
Assessing Corn and Soybean Populations and Replanting Decisions

Sponsor:
Call/text Mark  1-618-521-6805

Photo credit: Tosh Mazzone 

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Transcript

Ryan Spelman (00:18)
Welcome to another episode of the Agronomy Highlights podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Spelman, and I'm joined here with my lovely co-hosts. We got both on today, Dwayne Miller and Justin Brackenridge. Justin and Dwayne, how are you guys doing?

Dwane Miller (00:31)
Hi, I'm doing good. We got two for the price of one today. Me and Justin, right, Justin?

Justin Brackenrich (00:35)
Big deal day, yeah.

Ryan Spelman (00:37)
Yeah, it is a big deal today for a couple of reasons. We have a great show for you guys. We're going to talk about planting conditions, kind of tips to prepare for planting, and kind of all of the things you should be thinking of this time of year. And one of the reasons we have everyone on today is this is going to be my last show as a host. So I have taken a new role. And our guest here is celebrating to that.

Justin Brackenrich (01:05)
my soundboard we could hit like you know applause or so yeah

Ryan Spelman (01:09)
Yeah, applause. Yeah, so anyways, I've accepted a new role at the university working with the Esker lab, which does field crop pathology. So I'll be kind of managing field trials and still connected to extension. So I'll still be seeing all of you guys here, but I need to take a little bit of a step back from the podcast. So, you know, that's probably one of the hardest things for me to leave with this role. So thank you to the audience for your support. But

You know, I'm leaving you with two wonderful, excellent hosts who've been hosting this whole time. So, yeah, let's kind of get into

Dwane Miller (01:44)
I can say from our standpoint, Ryan, know, we've got, we truly have mixed emotions here. All across the board from us here at Penn State. We know you're still going to be around, but gosh, we're just not going to see that smile and face every day like we're used to seeing you. you've done an awesome job in taking this podcast that's something that started in its infancy and expanding it with the help of Justin and

Justin Brackenrich (01:50)
You know.

Dwane Miller (02:11)
Appreciate all your work on the podcast here.

Ryan Spelman (02:14)
Yeah, thanks, Dwayne. I appreciate that.

Justin Brackenrich (02:17)
I think we're realizing, maybe everybody listening or the others always thought like, what's Ryan do around there, right? Now that we're having to figure this out for ourselves, we're having to learn how to edit and we're having to learn all these things. So you don't always appreciate what people do until maybe you're looking at what they're doing. So keep that in mind and perspective. But like Dwayne said, we're glad to see you going to something that's going to make you happy. But we are sad to see you leave us.

Ryan Spelman (02:46)
Well, I appreciate those kind words. Like I said, this is one of my favorite things to do and I'm gonna go have fun running some plenipotology-based trials and seeing you guys at meetings. But yeah, I think you guys are gonna do an excellent job and I know you're just gonna have to both practice your welcomes over and over until you find your voice here.

But I think you guys have been great to work with on this show and the audience has been great It's been awesome to meet people in the real world who listen to the show So hopefully I'll be back, know to give some research updates every now and again But you know definitely stepping back as a host. So Thank you all and Let's let's get into the the main part of that. so Justin why don't you introduce what we're

Justin Brackenrich (03:36)
Sure, sure. So this is gonna fall in in line with some of the things that we've been doing Brainstorming right we we sit around we kind of work on these things like quarterly, you know Maybe we try to plan three to four months worth of them at a time and that gets a little challenging because you're looking What is gonna happen over the next four months? But how do you also be kind of reactive and get some of the the timely things but one of the ones

that came up that was interesting for all of us is this discussion about planting considerations. I know we've done things in the past on, you know, like early spring assessments of corn and soybeans. We've talked about planting small grains. We've done stuff with pasture and hay. But I think this idea of just the last couple years, springs have been, I think where I'm at, they were completely opposite, right? One of them was so dry you couldn't get anything in the ground.

The other one was so wet that you couldn't get out there to even try to get anything in the ground. And so that kind of put us to this idea of let's prep for planting. If you're sitting here today and you're thinking about what things do I need to consider and get in a row, what would they be? And so we brought on Dale Voight, one of our, I'll let him introduce his title. Maybe it's senior extension educator. I'm not quite sure, but Dale's with us from Lebanon County.

He's been here a long time, has a lot to share. He's kind of a lot of our go-tos when it comes to practical agronomic work that we're working on. So, Dale, welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Del Voight (05:00)
Well, thanks Justin. It's great to be here and it's good to see Ryan moving in a different role that the growers will have more access to the ⁓ plant pathology side. And that certainly comes into what we're talking today with seedling diseases and planters and how that all kind of fits together. But yeah, I don't think I'm an expert in this. It's just I think I have a lot of time and grade and followed a lot of planters and did a lot of

standard deviations of stand and looked at some of these yields as they keep going up and it's a lot, you know, the planter is the one time you have one shot at it.

Dwane Miller (05:37)
I that's one thing that I was thinking about as Justin was talking about you, Dell. I think that you put that into perspective and you've got one shot to do this. There are so many variables and we'd like to just try to take a look at some of those and where can you get better? Where can you improve just a little bit every time?

Del Voight (06:01)
And I think that, you know, to start out with the beginning with the end in mind is that, years ago, and I still think it holds true, is that a lot of growers tend to want to run 24 hours a day when it's fit and go, go, go. And, you know, we've always recommended 25 % early, 50 % middle, and 25 % late. And so if you have a hundred acres, you could probably plant that in all in one day.

But it should you, you know, it might be better that you plant 25 acres of that and then wait a couple of weeks till it's really ideal planning and then plant the majority, maybe 50 acres and then wait a few more weeks and plant 25 late. It's not a bad strategy. You spread your risk of drought in the fall over a period of time. you know, you, we've all been there. You get to winter meetings and they say, well, my latest planning did the best. And, know,

Or my earliest planting did the best. And the fact is, on our marginal soils that are a little droughty, you have to have a little different approach to how you plant. So yeah, it's a great topic to go on here.

Justin Brackenrich (07:15)
One of the things that I'm not sure maybe you told me this or someone's told me over my career is that when you're looking at reasons that stands may fail in the spring, at this point there's a bunch of really good genetics in our crops and there's a bunch of really good chemistries and there's a bunch of good fertilizer that often people want to look to those things but typically when I go to a farm after having some of these conversations my first question usually starts with what's the plan or look like?

Right, not that I'm interested in the color of it to make my observation, but what is the maintenance or the setup of that planter look like? Because if you're putting in good seeds, you're using good chemistries, you're using a good program, how is that placement gonna work? It can be as simple as having your fertilizer, you know, instead of a two by two, maybe it's two by one or something, right? Like it doesn't take much when you're on contours or things that can really lead to some diminished stands. And so I think

Let's jump into some of these considerations. Let's jump in some of these things we're looking at. Dwayne, where do want to us?

Dwane Miller (08:15)
Well, I let's let's start with soil conditions because I you mentioned Justin two opposite extremes over the last two years and and guys, you know, we get we get talking to folks and man, you know, we're no telling. And it was just a little bit. It was a little too wet. But I just I had to I had to do it. So they'll talk to us about how to soil conditions play into planning.

planting decisions that we make in springtime.

Del Voight (08:44)
Yeah, that's a great question to start out. I've been going daily on that soil temperature website from Syngenta. it's really changed. And so the first thing on soils would be soil temperature. And that's going to vary by what densities in the soil, what your residue is. There's a lot of great

great research that was done by Lynn Hoffman years ago where he looked at row cleaners, instance, sweeping off the row cleaners, and that's almost a 12 degree bump in soil temperatures around the seed. that's great. That's a big deal, depending on that. But there's other things. think down there in some of our soils in the southeast of Lebanon area,

And I'm sure every county has these kind of soils, but it has a lot of clay in it. And so when you got 30%, 40 % clay, then you're going to have to vary your closing wheels because, you know, go with a spoked, at least one spoke part of that. And that's what we use at the research station because of the clay. So you, you avoid that number one thing, which is compaction right above the seed. And Justin kind of alluded to the

What are some of the main causes of stand variation? And it's that crusting that occurs just above the seed. And the plant will tell you when you dig that corn seedling up or soybean, if it's all crooked, because it had to really fight to get through that, that tells you that maybe you have to have a different strategy to managing that. Some soils, the last couple of years with the strip tillage,

where you do the strip till in the fall, and then you freshen that in the spring. So you're basically working that little eight inch area in the spring. In the morning, you get nice hot sunny day. By afternoon, it's nice and friable. And then you plant in there, and you have no sidewall compaction. And it's almost like perfect conditions, almost a hybrid of what we used to do 30 years ago with disking and letting it dry out and then planting.

But you're only doing that in a small area. it works great for if you've got heavy residue, like cover crops. You get a two-foot tall cover crop, and you go over, and you have these nice strips that you plant into. You avoid the hairpinning, which can happen where you push down the residue into the row itself. And then you're fighting with moisture that way. So other soil conditions that apply here.

is the surface pH. I've been really, our soil test kits been flying out of the office. I saw it today, I got a restocker manure test kits. That's a whole nother podcast, but getting that surface pH. I've seen pH is down to four, two inches deep. And so that amount of aluminum there, now you're really limiting root growth. And those are all soil things that you need to make sure it's corrected.

prior to even running the planner.

Justin Brackenrich (11:45)
Jump back to soil temperature a little bit there. There are a lot of things online it so let me let me preface this I guess I'm thinking about things that are easy to do from your home that that you shouldn't overlook right and soil temperature with technology and AI and satellites and stuff like It's never gonna be going out with an instant read probe and sticking it in the ground and figuring out what your temperature is But I mean there are so many things that you like right now. I'm looking at one

and they're saying our temperature today is 53 degrees. What temperature and what is that trend that you're looking for before you start planting corn and beans?

Del Voight (12:20)
Yeah, so good question. you know, it's definitely the online resources are estimates. So it's going to kind of get you to where it's time to go out with your two inch probe and stick it down there and see what it actually is. There's two different timings that they've done research on. so, you know, the morning one, like nine o'clock in the morning, and then the other one is at 1pm in the afternoon to stick the probe in. And then when that's 50 degrees, that's usually go time.

Okay.

Dwane Miller (12:50)
you

look for a forecast that if it okay if it get yesterday it was 49 49 right today it's 50 Do you look for that forecast to continue to have that warming trend? Versus oh we we finally got there, but now we're now the 10-day is looking pretty cold and wet

Del Voight (13:10)
Yeah, I think so. I've been feeling a lot of calls right now. It's kind of similar to this is like burned down herbicides. You know, we want those those nighttime temperatures to be right around 40 if you're going to use a product like glyphosate. And ⁓ and if you look at that, I didn't look at today's. I should have done that in preparation. But I think it's similar with with trying to determine when we can run is looking at soil temperatures at night.

what's the nighttime temperatures. And then also how protected it is. mean, if you get a heavy residue on top and you're getting 45, 50 in the soil, that residue is gonna moderate that overnight. So there's a lot of factors there that I don't know, what... think the online stuff you're mentioning, like I do the Syngenta ones, time to go out and check.

Justin Brackenrich (13:58)
Yeah, that's what I use.

Yeah, yeah. And I think so, like, kind of back to what Duane was saying, Ryan, you got to get in here. You're going to have to talk louder if you would get in here.

Ryan Spelman (14:09)
That's fine, that's fine. I'll jump in at some point.

Justin Brackenrich (14:11)
A week ago, well, let me say last night our low temperature where I'm at in Southwest PA was I think it was 52 Three days ago. It was 17 degrees, right? And so like don't don't let yourself fall into this trap because we were looking at the forecast and it's maybe all above 40, know two nights ago I was outside covering up plants that you know, we so

You have to look at this and take some of this with a grain of salt of understanding your own climate and your own weather and your own trajectories. But just that next week looks good. It's the first of April. I don't think that that's the best thing for everyone to go just because the soil temperature may be reaching that 50 degree mark.

Del Voight (14:52)
Yeah, and I have this conversation a lot with growers and it all depends on how many acres you got to plant. If I have some growers, I have about 30 growers that are over 3000 acres and so they've got to start early to get the bulk of their acres in that prime time planting of, you know, first, second week of May. But they're starting. They'll probably be starting sometime in the first, second week of April.

So they can do that. And then I have growers that they only takes them a couple of days to plant and they can wait till it is ideal, know, the end of April and soil temperatures are up. you know, that who and like you said, Pennsylvania is so diverse and the elevations are so different. You know, you get up in Potter County and that is a completely or down in Somerset. I've talked to growers that moved from Lebanon up to those areas and it's

It's just like you said, you've got to adapt to your own, you know, what clay levels are in your soil and also this whole temperature sway and elevation, which makes a big difference.

Justin Brackenrich (16:01)
I used to work with a farmer and he would say, you have to start before you can finish, right? And I was asking him, are you done planting yet? And I think in the spring, that's as much of a true story as anything. So the last couple of years, we've had some pretty tight planting windows and that can either be because it being hot and dry or maybe cold and wet. Maybe we've had a few days of rain off and on. But if we do finally get some good weather and you're looking at three or four days,

What do you prioritize? Is it tillage? Is it fertilizing? Is it planting? And what strategies can we use to help us figure that out?

Del Voight (16:38)
Yeah, so that's a big one too. I've always kind of leaned towards if it's ideal planting that you don't think you're going to get sidewall compaction and you're going to get good coverage of the seed if you're shooting for an inch and half of soil on top of that seed, I would tend to want to plant first. And I think there's a lot of new products that are out there like Surtain, for example.

advocating Surtain, but that Sharpen that has the ZC formulation that you can go over top, that gives you an option. So you might have to take your product back and switch out a little bit, but there's options there that if you had Planet Cornyn, you know, you could make some adjustments there. And the nitrogen, I don't get excited about it. I think that my standpoint over the years has been why put that out there early?

when you're exposing it. Like last year, we got burned, right? We got 20 inches of rain on top of this stuff. We lost 80 % of our active ingredient herbicides, and we lost the majority of our nitrogen. so your full fully, last year fully side dress was a huge differential. If they didn't side dress, they lost a lot of lead yield. And that's a whole nother topic, but getting back to your original question.

I would prioritize it by what's the soil doing. If it's ideal for planting, I'd get it in the ground. If that was your 25 % of your farm you're gonna plant and it's ideal, I would get it in.

Ryan Spelman (18:03)
So Del, you know, I think you made a good point there about like losing your nitrogen application because yeah, last year that was a great example of that. know, if in my area, it was like the month of May was just, you know, really wet. And this is maybe when if you are working with wheat, right, this would be a good window earlier on to fertilize your wheat if you need extra fertility before you get out on the field and work on the fields that are to be planted. Now you also kind of mentioned the sidewall

compaction, you know, in your last answer, in this one too, can you talk about exactly what conditions we need to be worried about for that? Is this mostly a moisture thing? And how much moisture does it take to really have a bad sidewall compaction problem?

Del Voight (18:44)
Yeah, I think I see it most common when it's that field capacity where it's saturated, right? And that smearing action of the double disc opener on the side just makes a clay pot. That's where your 35%, 40 % clay. I I have some growers that they can plant pretty much into pea soup and it will not compact because it's so much silt in there. But when you get the clay content up and then, you know,

How do you know what you have? Well, that's where soil testing comes in. You know, get a measurement of your CEC and the fractions and that will tell you what clay content you have. But you already know experientially. mean, Duane's been farming forever. He knows where his ground gets that clay in it and you got to stay out of it. And some areas he probably knows it could probably run there, you know, and just by years and years of doing it. And so I think that

This to avoid soil compaction. That's where I think the strip till came in. think strip till also is a slug strategy, which is another thing that kind of goes along with planters. Like what do we need to be doing with our planner now also for pest control? Cause a lot of our pest control comes through that planner. You know, whether it's the BT corn that you're purchasing, whether it's the seat treatment that's on there, whether it's, you know, slug things you put on, whether you're using.

potash fertilizer over the top or sweeps to keep the slugs from getting down in the furrow. And the sidewall compaction is the number one problem with slugs. When you leave that slit open, and it's like a superhighway for the slugs to drop down in there and just go. So that kind of ties in with Justin's comments about when you have a window like that, do you plant first or do you spray?

And if it's ideal, we're going to avoid all of that issue, then I think I'd roll it in. So I don't know if I answered your question enough, because there's a lot of strategies there to deal with it with different closing wheels.

Justin Brackenrich (20:43)
When you walk out onto a farm, what keys you in that there may be sidewalk compaction? I mean, we've talked about what it is, how we get it, how to avoid it, but maybe thinking a month from now or two months from now, what tips you off that you maybe didn't make the right choice?

Del Voight (20:58)
I can even look into fall, Justin, when their combines are running and I'll look over and I can still see the slit open. Okay. That's your clay pot compaction. you know, not only that, but a lot of our post-herbicides, you know, do not like to have exposed roots. And so if you have that slit open and then you spray some of these residuals, amides like dual, on top of that, you get it right in there with a seed.

Roots are exposed then you have damage from that too. And I'm concerned about the wheat. We had late planted wheat This is off topic, but we did have some heaving from the alternating shrink and swell There are some roots that are exposed. So harmony extra right now Growers I've been telling growers to kind of wait a little bit more but those Secondary roots get in really deep and then hit it. So yeah, that's a good question though of how to tell

you can tell really easily just jump off your planter. If it's not closing, then you know it's not, you know, you've got to do something. You've got to intervene because it's like, this is the one time you get to do it. And so that's kind of a critical thing.

Ryan Spelman (22:04)
Yeah, I think you bring up like a good point there that the sidewall compaction issue, it's not just that, you're going to hinder some root growth that could have gone outwards and it's going to really stall that early on, but then you have an exposed seed. And that is one of the larger challenges associated for a number of reasons. When it comes to pest damage, when it comes to, you know, exposure to the elements and then just like poor soil contact, there's a lot of things that can happen there. So, you know, maybe this is a good way to lead into

talking about your nutrient kind of considerations at planting or just before planting, right? Another thing that we can do if we have proper row closure is to make sure we have the right nutrition for that plant like to get started and get started early. And you know, some of those things will change with the soil temperature and how early. Maybe you can talk about some of the considerations when it comes to.

your recommendations on nutrients at planting.

Del Voight (23:01)
Yeah, so nutrients and sidewall compaction go hand in hand. we see that. You don't see it until V5 to V7. That's when your potash deficiency really pops up. And a lot of the cases I've been involved in, come in, we pull a soil test to P, the K levels are fine, but the plant's telling you it's potassium. And when you look and you're like, okay, well, you got sidewall compaction. So the plant could not

explore the soil to get to the levels that they needed. And so we can certainly correct that with a dry murata potash over the top and correct it really quickly. But that should have been corrected at planting. They couldn't extract it because it couldn't get out of that row. So that's a big thing. Now, when you get into starter fertilizers and all of those kind of things, if you look at the research,

It's really difficult for us to show any kind of yield response. What's the return on investment of starter? Not there. Now, if it's rented ground and you got to provide the P and K and it's low in P and K and there's low pH, know, Doug Beagle has done some work where he had, you know, pelletized lime to try to react with the in the row and then putting P and K to the side.

⁓ that provided what it needed just for that year. Because you don't know if you're going to rent it next year, so you don't want to correct everything and then somebody else take it over. So I know I'm getting off track here a little bit, but there's a lot of factors there too. But if you own the land and you're going to go in there if it's extremely early, that's where some of the...

This is where soil temperature comes in because that phosphorus and things like that that you put on with the seed can get, know, when it's cold, it's not available, can be not available. A low pH, you could have really excessive phosphorus levels, but if your pH is really low, then it's not available. So there's a whole nother podcast just talking about that whole thing.

Ryan Spelman (25:00)
So now Dell, that's interesting that you're saying with colder temperatures, you run some risks of like nutrients, either like buying this soil or not being able to get into the plant with a starter fertilizer. Like I could see it like the other way as well, like cause oftentimes the thought is, okay, if I'm going earlier, I need to get my plant going faster. So I'm going to add starter fertilizer, right? To make sure it pops up, right? A pop-up fertilizer. So you're saying that that's kind of poor advice, right? And that the colder it is,

you're not going to get the efficiency that you need out of that for fertility.

Del Voight (25:33)
I'm glad you said that because that's not what I'm really saying. I'm saying we haven't been able to prove the yield advantage. So Penn State, if we recommend something, it needs to be something to the grower that's going to return on investment. And we see those things, Ryan. So if you're early planting and you use starter fertilizer, you do get that greening effect.

And you do get even ammonium. when Doug and Greg did just ammonium sulfate or just a little bit of nitrogen, but no P and K at all, it reacts with the available P and K that's already in the soil and makes it available early. But when it comes to the yield advantage, we didn't see any yield differences. So yeah, it made me feel good. I slept really well at night, but it didn't respond. We saw that with molasses.

Some of you guys were involved with the molasses stuff and we get a starter response out of the molasses, the three gallons in the row on the seed. You get this nice green growth. Everything looks great, but we can't get a response to yield. And that's the frustrating part. But with slugs, all right, if you got a real problem with slugs, then I think we have to include the starter. It's another management tactic for slugs, know, row cleaners.

making sure you have no sidewall compaction, starter fertilizer, T-band on the top of the row, put a concentrated band of the fertilizer. Those are all techniques that help with slugs to keep them away from that growing seedling. And once we get the V2-3, it's gonna grow away from slug damage, but we have to keep that from getting in the compaction zone. Keep compaction.

Dwane Miller (28:27)
I've got a question that relates back to nutrients. with the price of fertilizer, if I have a farmer that's saying, hey, I normally didn't have access to manure, but you know what? I got a call on some. I'm going to put it on. Any thoughts or considerations that they should have if they're using manure for the first time as a nutrient source? Yeah.

Del Voight (28:52)
That's a great one. just talked to a grower last night actually about the same thing. So put the manure on, don't put more than 50 pounds of nitrogen on with the commercial fertilizer, and then plan to use either the chlorophyll meter or a green seeker at side dress time and then meet the demand then. Yep, that's a great, great, absolutely timely topic that needs to get out there. If you're new to manure,

Go ahead and put it on. It's sort of a, you don't know exactly what's gonna be available. I mean, if it rains the next day, you might get all of what you calculated, but if it doesn't rain for a week, you might only get a fraction, 20 % of what you put on. And the only way to know that is let the plant tell you at side dress time. Great. Yeah.

Dwane Miller (29:38)
Great advice, right?

No more than 50 units of nitrogen at planting time. Use the chlorophyll meter to tell you the rest. Yes.

Justin Brackenrich (29:49)
I think manure is one of those tough things to do because we have to think about it as like this is not a blended complete fertilizer that we're handing in a soil test and saying give me a hundred of units of N and 75 units of P and 150 units of K, right? This is so many levels of error that can be put into manure. mean, one, you're trusting a book value or you're trusting that your sample telling you what it is is exactly what you think it is. Two, now we're looking at the calibration and the accuracy of

which we apply that in three, especially if we're talking about corn, the like impossibility we're going to meet a nitrogen need with a manure without having other environmental issues, right? So I think like manure is a part of this puzzle and one that we should absolutely use. But I think Dale's advice is perfect in that you have to know what you're putting out when you put it on so that you can follow up with what it needs later.

I don't know, maybe that's bad advice, but I just, don't think that we can out manure a corn crop without having environmental issues or something that runs along with that.

Del Voight (30:52)
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's a hot thing right now. I mean, you could pretty much do a podcast just on some of these things with the manure. if you're using book values from the Agronomy Guide, they can sway 100 % either way. And then how you handled it and put it in the field and the timing till you got rain, if we're in a no-till scenario is big. So the only way to really gauge it is using

in season tools. And if you don't trust the green seeker or you don't trust the chlorophyll meter, mean, we have four of them available in my area, just my county area. But the there's some growers that would rather use a PSNT and that's fine too. So you just go grab it. And if it's less than 25 parts per million, then you need to be putting more on. And that's, that's perfect timing. And

The manure testing, I'm amazed at how many growers think you can just grab one scoop and put it in the thing and test it where, you know, if you do multiple loads and you get a really good idea and you don't change your bedding and your feeding and everything from year to year, it'll be fairly consistent year to year when you're starting to spread that manure.

But the chicken manure, depending on the manufacturer, some of them, they're changing their bedding every flock. Every flock gets new, and it's a lot of carbon in there. And that can alter how you do it. that's off of planters. I wanted to get back to something that Ryan, before he changed position here, with soybeans.

A lot of times when it gets warm like this, and I just talked to my neighbor, he just retrofitted his planter. This is kind of timely because we put the auto shutoff on it and the down pressures and reduced inner diameter press wheels, all that kind of stuff. But one year we had a question like, it was middle of March and we had 75, 80 degree temperatures. I don't know if.

Wayne or Justin remember that. And people were like, well, what do you think about putting it in the ground? And we didn't have any research in that area. So we went down to the research station and planted beans the end of March. And then we planted every two weeks all the way till the middle of June. And kind of coming back to soil temperatures, Justin, the early planted March didn't have hardly any rhizobium, no nodules.

So yeah, the plant grew. We had good stands, but we didn't have the nodules because you can't fight nature. If it wants to infect it, it will. But the best plant things came out of that middle of May because they had adequate nodulation. that was, surmised that it was just too cool for the rhizome, rhizobium to interact and invade the root system.

Ryan Spelman (33:46)
That's an interesting observation, Dell, because we've talked behind the scenes quite a bit about what goes first, soybeans or corn, and maybe we'll leave that for another episode. I think to your point there, even if the plant germinates, we need this warmer window of soil temperature for the rhizobia to form the nodules. that's a really good point. Just because you can plant earlier and get plants doesn't mean it's always a good idea.

And Dwayne, it looks like you had something. Do you mind if I move to the next question or do you have?

Dwane Miller (34:17)
I was just going to say, my dad used to say, all right, here we are. It's the 5th of May. It's time to plant corn. And oftentimes we see problems with folks being those tied into a date necessarily and not the conditions. just again, a plug to understand when conditions are right and the forecast looks like it's going to stay that way.

you know, then we can think about planning, but maybe not when conditions aren't the best.

Justin Brackenrich (34:45)
I

know we want to move on from this but this is not an expensive or difficult thing for you to check on your own right if you don't believe us or you don't think this is right I have like a a very cheap $10 or less instant read meat thermometer that stays in the back of my truck that's got some tape on it at two inches and you know like this is something if you want to slam beans in the ground tomorrow take a soil temperature right and then wait until you do your other ones and take a soil temperature of those

And this isn't going to be like great science, you can probably correlate to yourself of hey these earlier ones The soil temperature was X and they didn't do so well compared to Y at this later date, right? It doesn't have to always be replicated and triplicated and stuff for you to do some one farm Citizen scientist type stuff work to see how this is going for you

Del Voight (35:35)
Yeah, and for those of us like Justin, I know you have really good eyes. My eyes are terrible. I have a lot of growers that, know that there's those laser, if you pull the button, it tells you the temperature. So you dig down and you point it at the bottom, you two inches deep, and then I can read it. But I have a hard time reading the thermometers. And sometimes you don't know how long you have to wait till it actually...

You you stick it in the ground and you wait and it changes and it changes and when's it going to stop and is it really stopped where if you gun it. So I've been using one of those. I don't know what they're called. They're.

Justin Brackenrich (36:12)
Like an infrared tim-

Ryan Spelman (36:13)
Yeah.

Del Voight (36:14)
Yeah,

so yeah, there's a, everybody should be having some way to do that, I think is important. yeah, would just do before, before we move on, Ryan, if you request it to, especially if corn, not so, and beans, you can get the cold germ. So when you're, let's say, Dwayne wants to have a final stand of 30.

I don't know what you run up there, 30,000 plants per acre. And you get 95 % germ on your corn bag. That's what's the warm germ. But let's say it's 82 % cold germ. Well, then you should base it. If you're planting early, you should base it off the 82. And then you're going to bump your population up based off the cold germ. Does that make sense to you?

The warm germ on beans, was at the seed pickup days last week answering questions as growers were picking up seed, and the beans are like 80 % germination. So that's a loss of 20%. And that's warm germ. And if it's 75 or 70, that cold germ test, now you're really going to have to bump up another 30%. So that's sort of a point, not planter related, but for success, you know, maybe

Maybe request the cold germ numbers on it.

Ryan Spelman (37:36)
Del, do you know what a cold germ, like what temperature that is? was my question. OK, yeah. when you're looking at these, right, and I haven't looked at a lot of bags, so like A, do they all have cold germ tests that they run? Only some of them. then, you know, what temperature, at what soil temperature do I look at the cold versus the warm germ?

Del Voight (37:57)
Yeah, so Ryan, when you figure that out, let me know. I don't work in those labs. don't know what the cold germ test is.

We can find it

Justin Brackenrich (38:05)
Google, I was on the machine here, right? And it's saying 50 degrees Fahrenheit is where they're testing cold germination.

Del Voight (38:13)
It seems cool to me, but not cool like that's cool. But mean cool from a temperature standpoint.

Justin Brackenrich (38:20)
I thought it was pretty cool stuff too. I'll keep digging.

Del Voight (38:23)
So 50, 50 would make sense. That's for corn probably and beans probably are 60 would be my guess. Because that's the cardinal temperature for corn.

Justin Brackenrich (38:32)
So you may want to edit this out, but I think this is interesting. This is about soybeans. Seeds are planted in a soil mix and kept at roughly 50 degrees for seven days to stimulate cold, followed by five to seven days at 77 degrees to measure their recovery. So when they're doing this, mean, it's what I guess to me, this looks at like this original conversation we were having about, I'm trending up towards 60, but

you know, it bottoms out and we go into 50 degrees for a few days. And now we ramp back up the other side. What is that recovery and that condition gonna look like? So that's kind of interesting information.

Almost cool, right?

Dwane Miller (39:14)
It's almost cool.

Del Voight (39:15)
As a grower, would almost want to, I would almost demand I want the cold germ for me to make an early planting decision and know what to set my plan around.

Dwane Miller (39:28)
Yeah, so it's basically telling us if you're planting at that around that 50 degree soil temperature, you should be thinking about searching out information on the cold germ percentage and adjusting accordingly.

Del Voight (39:41)
Yeah, in a perfect world, And I know that rhizobiums are being bred genetically to have more cold tolerance, but I'm just, have not read the Agronomy Journal to see if anybody had, at least in our East Coast here, has done some early planted rhizobium infection studies. That's probably something that we need to consider at Penn State to look at.

some of these newer rhizobiums, whether they truly can inoculate earlier. But that's off the topic of planners, but.

Ryan Spelman (40:15)
Yeah, no, I think that this is a good conversation because it kind of reveals like there's more to this, right? And knowing how your plants are going to respond. And and I mean, as we're kind of reading what that cold germ temperature is, I mean, a lot of times, at least in my area, you know, our soil temperatures are dipping into 50 at night, you know, most of the time, even into our, you know, the the later into May, you know, planting window. So I think that's a pretty important

temperature to know it and maybe one that you plant based on, know, depending on if you really know that seed or not. And I was also doing a little bit of research here about rhizobium and they do say that active window, you know, the average active window is that 75 degree to 77 degree soil temperature. So that's kind of interesting too in that, you know, early infection or inoculation with the rhizobium is really important. So.

Yeah, there's a little bit more to this.

Del Voight (41:13)
yeah, there's a, and you know that it's a great point because if growers are listening to us, it might stimulate them to maybe seek out more information relative to that by planning date. you know, Duane had mentioned about his dad with the May 5th and, you know, the monkey in the room is global warming and you can't go by dates because we keep,

warming, whether we agree or disagree on how we got warm. mean, I've been seeing growers plant earlier and earlier and earlier, and the fall's getting later and later. And last year, most of my growers were in the first week of April, like the end of this week, next week timeframe. And that's where our big yields come from. And we didn't get the frost.

A lot of them plant beans first before frost prevention because, you know, beans have much more axial buds on their growing points, so to speak, where corn has one growing point. And if you don't have it deep enough and it's not protected by an inch and a half of soil to buffer that frost, then you're in trouble. So, you know, there's a lot of facets to that, but we're, you can't ignore, you know, the fact that we're warming and so we need to adapt to that. So.

a lot of the older farmers that maybe got burned 70 years ago, it's changed. So yeah, good stuff.

Ryan Spelman (42:38)
Yeah, and I think I'm glad you included there some of the frost tolerance when it comes to beans versus corn, because I think if you listen to this conversation, you would start to think, okay, that means why are we planting beans all the time before corn, right? If we run into some of these issues with nodulation, the other end is that frost tolerance.

But I think it's something that we should think a little bit more about. And I think we are thinking of doing an episode in the future on this because there's some nuance there, right? There's some, you know, maybe diversifying some of that risk between corns and beans is a better idea. So maybe we can jump into that next question now then. When we're talking about some of these temperatures and soil conditions that are like a little less than ideal,

what can we do to set up our planter or know our seeding rates? I think we kind of covered seeding rates but really setting up our planter to you know give those seeds a better shot.

Del Voight (43:31)
Yeah, that's another big thing because I had a meeting the other week with a group and a group of growers just informally and I'm always, they always hear me talk about super high populations. Some of our best yields are always in that 41, 43,000 plants per acre. I say, my gosh, we'd never do that. Never do that in school, Kilk County, right? Let's plant 20,000.

Dwane Miller (43:56)
That's two crops at one for us, know.

Del Voight (43:59)
So my comment is, if you do not have a good handle on simulation in your planter, then you should not be up in your population. Because those people that are planting 36, 38, and 40, you're getting standard deviations of less than two inches, which is almost a perfect stand. So if you're shooting for three or three and a half between plants, I'm talking corn here.

Justin Brackenrich (44:25)
Yeah, let's back up a bit, but we wander too far in here and set the stage. Let's talk about singulation and what do you mean when you say that?

Dwane Miller (44:29)
⁓

Del Voight (44:33)
I mean the correct placement in the soil at the spacing that you have selected. we're talking... Yeah, you've got to have your planter be able to do that.

Justin Brackenrich (44:43)
And there's a lot of math that exists out there. If you want to look at like, singulation tables, if you tell it kind of like, what your population is, there are tables that will give you a rough estimate of what that distance is, because it's just a linear measurement over your acreage, right? So if you're wondering about your own singulation, look up one of these tables, you're on 30 inch rows, this is your population, it should tell you what that space is. Now,

From there, now you're talking about the standard deviation of that space. What does that mean?

Del Voight (45:13)
Yes, so that's a departure from your goal. So if you're a goal, if you looked on that table and you should have a plant every three inches or every four inches, then that's what it should be, right? So if you've got wear on your double disc openers, where they're below 14 or 14 and half, whatever the manufacturer has on there, and you are pushing seed back and forth between it, or if you've got an older planter where the drop tube

interrupts and you might get a double every once in a while and a skip. So there's upgrades that you can put on to deliver the seed closer to the source so that you don't deviate from that. Having reduced inner diameter press wheels on the planter, that's a good investment because you're taking the pressure from the sidewall, which reduces the sidewall compaction. And then,

going back to the closing wheels, you know, getting away from the cast iron systems where we tend to push it in, that can push the seed from your original deviation. So if you were dropped the seed, everything's perfect and you get to the press wheel and it's got a little bit too much pressure because you're rolling between different fields. You set it for one field, you go to another, it's completely different. You push the seed and now the seeds pushed over three inches from where it was. You know, those are all things that can happen.

that you need to be cognizant of to make the adjustments. So that's one thing our team, Justin and Ryan, and Ryan's gonna be doing most of this for us is going out and doing standard deviation of just to work with growers. And I'll give you an example. In one row unit, this was a 12 row unit.

And we had deviations from two to almost 10 inches of deviation between planter units. So row unit 11 had some issue. And it turned out to be it was just basically a pressure. There was a little crack in the line that changed the way that the seed was being delivered. And those are the kind of things you have to, when you're starting to plan out and go ahead and.

lift up the press wheels and start checking to see what you're getting down and make adjustments to individual row units as needed. Soybeans doesn't seem to matter. We didn't talk a lot about soybeans, but we've tried to do things with varying, you know, a drill versus a corn planter versus dropping over and falling and dumping the bag out on the field. Doesn't seem to matter at all, but corn is a big one, so.

Good question, Justin. Thank you.

Dwane Miller (47:49)
Ryan actually asked that one, not Justin Dell, but that's okay. So my follow up for this. You mentioned all kinds of great things. Reduced diameter, reduced inter diameter closing wheels, up tubes, down pressure, you know? Okay. So

Del Voight (47:55)
Wait.

Press release.

Dwane Miller (48:08)
Aside from the normal, all right, I know we've got to check our double disc openers, make sure they're good, make sure there's no burrs or broken, dropped ⁓ seed tubes in there. Is there one attachment that you would recommend before any others, an add-on for a planter? And I've got one in mind, but I want to know what you'd say first.

Del Voight (48:33)
were the one thing that you would need to.

Dwane Miller (48:37)
Not to put you on the spot or anything, but...

Del Voight (48:40)
Well, I'm assuming that you have road cleaners in the front. Right?

Dwane Miller (48:45)
don't assume you know what that means, right?

Del Voight (48:48)
I think, and I'm assuming, let's caveat this because this is a no-till system.

Dwane Miller (48:54)
Yeah, let's say it's a note.

Del Voight (48:55)
system because that makes a difference with what I would put on a planner. But I think that having a good set of sweeps on the front would be the first thing in my mind that I would want to make sure I can have one that's easily adjustable so you can vary the depth of what you're doing and it gives you a good six or eight inches of path that you can

allow the press wheel to do its job. If it's rolling over three inches of residue here and an inch of residue there as you're going across, you're not going to have a tabletop. And that's the goal is to have everything germinate the same. You planted everything the same depth. It's all going to come up within one or two days. if you've got this variation in seed depth, you're going to have that wave the whole summer. So my mind would

be there and then on the end of it would be having one spoke closed wheel and one castor plastic in the back.

Dwane Miller (49:55)
Okay. Yeah. So in a.

Del Voight (49:57)
What's yours? Mine?

Dwane Miller (49:59)
Well,

maybe we changed the game and I said no-till a little bit. I was thinking the seed firmer. What's your opinion on running a seed firmer versus not running one?

Del Voight (50:09)
the Keaton C firm. Yeah. Yeah, I am a fan. And I like the ones that have the pop-up right in with the firmer. Yeah, I'm sorry. I completely, I missed.

Dwane Miller (50:20)
And I think your suggestions are all great ones too. The seed firmer, on my mind, was probably the first thing that I'd recommend to somebody to try to have if they don't have that on their planter.

Del Voight (50:34)
Yeah, but from a return on investment, if you can't get a uniform depth of planting because you have no way to manage the residue in front of it, that would trump, I think, the deviation of stand. You want that tabletop, so it's critical to get that depth of planting to be perfect.

Dwane Miller (50:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's, let's transition into another, another area and let's talk about pests. So whether that is, you know, in disease, anything, what should farmers be thinking about scouting for even before planning time?

Del Voight (51:05)
WEEDS

Well, that's a loaded gun. There's a lot to that. For a grower that never used manure, they need to be aware that even though we haven't had economic levels of them because people are by and large are controlling them, is seed corn maggot. And when you spread manure, it's no different than if you were to chisel your ground. When you release that smell into the air, every seed corn maggot fly for a mile is going to come into that field.

And so we have to be thinking about that. So when we top dress manure, we're encouraging pests to come in and lay things there. Likewise, if you've got a lot of chickweed or green there, the cutworm moths that are flying right now are going to come up and they're going to like to find those egg laying sites. So now you have the Western bean cutworm, I'm sorry, the cutworm moths that come from the South up here.

and drop eggs. So that's another factor that you're going to have to have some pest management there. Some growers when they're going through and they're calibrating, you're telling me with the one year you've seen a ton of grubs, white grubs, you know, so, you know, these are things that you have to be kind of cognizant of when you're in your field. And if you're seeing things, then you might have to make an adjustment. So then the next question is how do you deal with those pests? Well,

Not every BT product that you get is going to control cutworms. There's different events. So we can provide the viewers the BT, handy BT trait table. Have you guys used that? So that was the number one thing at Seed Pickup Days. I say, you just bought this corn. It's got chrome. What does that mean on it? Or agra-sure. What does that mean?

And you have to know, you have to kind of take it back and say, OK, well, this controls X, Y, and Z pests. And if it doesn't, then you might have to do something over and above that. From a disease standpoint, and Ryan, you can answer this too, but in my area, it's mainly epithelium in my area. Like if I get problems with stans early,

and I pull them and I send them to the lab, it seems like it's always Pythium as the main one. So your seed treatment, if you're using a fungicide, not the one that they're just putting on the seed for storage, I'm talking about fungicides that are on the seed at planting, you got to make sure it's the right chemical that will take care of, in my area, Pythium. It might be rhizotomia or phytophthora in another environment.

But in our area, Pythium is number one. And then make sure you have enough active ingredient on there because you can only get so much on that little seed. And so if it requires a quarter pound of active ingredient and you're getting a tenth on the seed, you might have to put an additional seed treatment on it, planting early planted where the water molds can be an issue. Does that make sense to you guys? So that's a pest.

Seed corn maggots, if you're getting treated seed and it already has the insecticide directly on the seed, that's gonna pretty much take care of it. If you're planting a non-treated corn, more of a conventional hybrid that has no treatments on it, then we might have to go back to in-row insecticides if we have to control that.

There's a lot to it and these BT events are not all the same and not all of them. Some of them are. I was reading on that BT trade table the other day that there's some that the bugs, the Western corn rootworms are resistant to it. And maybe we have that issue in Pennsylvania. I Dr. Tucker has talked about that before. So if you've got that resistant population and you're buying BTRW that may or may not work on it, then you might be forced to look at other.

methods through the planter to put a bifenthrin or something else in there. That would be a corn to corn. That's a big thing. I have some growers that were buying a full package corn and they're going into bean ground. Well, why pay the 18 bucks fee for that bag if you're not gonna have the pest?

Dwane Miller (55:34)
But maybe that's the variety I really wanted. Maybe that was the racehorse, right? And they only offered it in the triple, you know? And I got to buy it. Right? But those are tough decisions. truthfully, a lot of that is what we try to maybe hit home here in tougher economic times.

Figure out what traits you really need and get hybrids that match that.

Del Voight (56:02)
Yeah, and Dwayne, if you look at some of the stuff, the economic return on some pests like European corn borer, when I first started here 30 years ago, we would spray for European corn borers with Fyridane and we had force and different things. But then once the BT came out, boy, we pretty much annihilated them. sometimes some people are planting conventional corn and they don't even get a corn borer invasion.

So what is the return on that in current times? So anyway, that's off planters, but you're going to deliver it through the planter. to me, it's field specific what pests you're going to end up showing. But slugs, that's where the planter comes in. Because if we're talking about slugs through a planter, then we need to have some way to clean the row out, keep the residue out. Then we need to put some kind of barrier.

⁓ There's even some of those mini pellets that you can run through on your planter, the metallodehyde baits that you can put right there. That to me is like, it's all hands on deck. And when is it? Late April, early May is when those hatch out big time. if you're planting right into that window where the slugs are real heavy, then you have to pretty much adapt your planter right at that time.

So great question on the pest part.

Ryan Spelman (57:19)
Yeah. I think Dell, you hit on something good at the end there, Especially for a lot of the insect pests, the early season insect pets, know, your corn seed maggots. I mean, that's where also proper road closure and some of the things you were talking about with sidewall compaction are going to be really important, right? So like we can, you know, reduce the need for some insecticide treatments just by getting that seed in the right place.

and rely on some of those traits if you have good traits for when that corn emerges. yeah, and I think this is where probably the environment on the disease side matters as well. You've kind of mentioned, think of what problems you have in different fields. You mentioned Pythium. We have a lot of Pythium and Phytophora kind of in our area. And it's really, you see it when the fields are laying wet. So another reason why.

we need to be thoughtful of planting conditions at planting. then sometimes, you you look at a season like last year where even if you got in in April when we had good planting conditions and then it laid wet for all of May, there's only so much you can do on some level with some of those things. But a good fungicide coating is going to help you there. Yeah, because they're not true fungi, right? So you need to have the right fungicides in there.

Del Voight (58:31)
Yeah, Ryan, know like for me, we have some river bottom ground along the Swatty and down by the Susquehanna River. And those areas like that, you almost have to really have a really good disease package because those we've tried. mean, Greg Roth and I did some field trials at a farm near a river bottom and we planted three times and the Pythium took it out all three times.

It can be really frustrating when you have soils that are really in that condition where the water molds just take over.

Dwane Miller (59:06)
Well, I think we're getting ready to wrap up our episode here and Del, you really gave us a tremendous amount of stuff to think about in terms of our pre-planting planning for success here in 2026. So if there's one thing you'd say to our listeners that would pay off big dividends for them of everything we kind of talked about.

What would be your takeaway message here? Give us three things that you'd like to have people consider.

Del Voight (59:39)
Well, I would say number one would be take your time. And number two would be get off of the tractor and check frequently to make sure. I I had a grower a number of years ago that Roe Unit Uber 4 wasn't planting and he had such a mouse nest in there. And, you know, he thought it was the chemical because it looked like kind of a spray pattern. But when you went in there, I mean,

He had a mouse nest in there. you know, take your time. If he would have gotten off the tractor, he probably would have picked that out pretty quickly. you know, checking and then also the third thing is that every field you farm is different. So you have to check it at each one. You change the field, you have to change the what you're looking for and make just reconfirm it. And just because you get a custom operator in to plant everything.

You know, trust, but verify, go out and look to see how he's doing it to make sure that it's correct and that you are getting good depth of placement and, ⁓ and all of those kinds of things. think, so that's my three things. Just take your time. don't have, this is not a race. We don't have to go a hundred miles an hour. I I, remember playing a test plot with a guy and the planter was listing up out of the ground and dropping and, ⁓ it's kind of.

That was the last time I did something at that place, but that's it's we don't have to be in a rush.

Dwane Miller (1:01:06)
So we're gonna plug a couple episodes where we talked about some of these other concepts that we covered today. If you wanna learn on any further, turn into season one, episode 28, where we talked about slugs and slug management. And also then in season four, episode 12, talking about the plant disease clinic and disease ID. So those are some episodes where you can drill down a little deeper on a couple of the topics that we talked about here today.

So Ryan, I'm gonna give you the honor since this is it for you, buddy. You can close us out on this episode.

Ryan Spelman (1:01:42)
This is a hard part. Well, thank you guys. Thanks for joining me on my last episode guys. It really appreciates it I know you have little choice But it's been a lot of fun and I've had a lot of fun on the show and to our listeners Thank you for sticking with us and it's been great to have you guys on our side and I know you'll continue to be diligent listeners under Dwayne and Justin's leadership and they're gonna do a great job so

Signing off!

Dwane Miller (1:02:11)
Here's one thing you can't say, Ryan. I'll catch you next time on Agronomy Highlights, right?

Ryan Spelman (1:02:17)
That's right, so I'll pitch it off to you. Alright, Dwayne, now that I said my farewell, why don't you give the close here?

Dwane Miller (1:02:23)
All right, thanks listeners for joining us. Hey, we're smiling and at the same time, we got a little tear in our eye to see Ryan take another venture, but thanks again for listening. Del, thank you for joining us and we'll catch you next time here on Penn State's Agronomy Highlights.

Del Voight (1:02:40)
You guys are great!