S4E22: Stand Assessment and Replant Decisions in Corn and Soybeans

Recorded: 5/21/26 

What should growers look for when evaluating early-season corn and soybean stands to decide whether replanting is worth the time and cost? In this episode, expert Zack Curtis discusses replanting decisions for corn and soybeans, emphasizing the importance of objective assessment, cost analysis, and strategic planning to optimize yields and profitability. 

Hosts: Justin Brackenrich and Dwane Miller, Penn State Extension
Guest: Zack Curtis, Penn State Extension

Links:
Assessing Corn and Soybean Populations and Replanting Decisions

Photo credit: Dwane Miller

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Transcript

Justin Brackenrich (00:18)
Welcome to another episode of the Agronomy Highlights Podcast. I'll be your host today, Justin Brackenrich, and and I'm joined by my colleague and co host Dwane Miller. Dwane how are you today?

Dwane Miller (00:29)
Doing great, Justin. Thanks. Here we are. ⁓ boy, we just got through a big stretch of warm weather. Now we got a little bit of cool rain going on going into the Memorial Day weekend. Are you ready to barbecue?

Justin Brackenrich (00:41)
Barbecue and cool rain, right? you know, but I guess the then the last conversations we've had were about cold rain. So I guess we'll take cool rain rather than cold rain, right?

Dwane Miller (00:51)
That's right, that's right. Who do we got on deck for us today?

Justin Brackenrich (00:53)
Yeah,

so today we've got friend of the show, Zack Curtis. Zack's an educator in Wayne County. I won't spoil that, I'll let him introduce himself. But ⁓ Zack's joining us today because he he's kind of an expert and wrote an article on replants. And we've seen a lot of cold weather, we've seen some some excessive wet, some excessive dry, some real hot, some real cold. You know, these these early planted things have kind of run the gambit already. So Zack's gonna walk us through

a lot of these ideas of when to replant, how to make assessments and when to decide, like frankly, is it making sense for us to replant or should we go with what we got? So Zack, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Zack Curtis (01:32)
Hey guys, thanks for having me on today.

Justin Brackenrich (01:37)
So Zack, I think let's just, you know, come out of this swinging. ⁓ we've got these these kind of weather events, right? I outlined them a little bit, but what's the biggest mistake a grower can make when they're deciding whether or not to replant corn or soybeans?

Zack Curtis (01:53)
Yeah, yeah, great. Good point. I

Justin Brackenrich (01:56)
It's kind of a loaded question, I know. We want our first one to be right right down the center over the plate, right?

Zack Curtis (02:02)
gosh. I I I think the the the the thing you have to keep keep in mind is just number one, keep your head on straight. ⁓ I know there's a lot going on in April, May. ⁓ you know, it it's a lot of long days, a lot of long nights. ⁓ trying to make sure that you're covering all your acres to get all your corn and soybean planting done on time and get it done well.

Understandably the most frustrating thing that would happen is you go through two months of hard work and long days, and then you know June rolls around and now you have these really poor looking stands. our first suggestion, try not to get emotional. you know, when when when we look at the re the whole concept of replanting is to improve the stand so that way we have improved yields.

Now, just because we have skips or gaps in a corner soybeans stand doesn't always mean that we need to replant it. It doesn't mean that we need to to restart from ground zero. There's a lot of some good math and some good estimates that go into helping you figure out whether or not a replant is worth it. the first is getting out and actually scouting the field. so to walk you through this and and

I'm I'm gonna reference an article on our website. It's titled Assessing Corn and Soybean Populations and Replanting Decisions.

Dwane Miller (03:26)
We'll be sure to put a link to that article in the in the show notes as well so that everybody has a copy of that.

Justin Brackenrich (03:32)
Exact, there's something right there that you just said. I I don't want to to move past this, but the idea of getting in the field and checking things versus than just looking at your ⁓ let's say we're on the the focus of weather. ⁓ actually are they dead or was it because it read 25 at your house or 27 at your house, you're gonna refill the planner and get back out there and go, right? Like so many times we talk about this stuff and it's scouting. You have to be in the field to scout. You can't scout from the road, you can't scout from your truck, you can't scout from the internet.

⁓ get out there and and actually see it. Anyway, back to you. Sorry, that's my soapbox over on Scouting.

Zack Curtis (04:08)
Well, and and that's a good point, Justin, because there's there's really three paths that you could take in this whole replant thing. The the first path could be that ⁓ you know, you're tired, maybe you're a little grumpy by the end of planting season. You get out there, you're driving by a field from the road, and you think it looks terrible, and the first thing you do, you you you just out of frustration, you get out there with the with a disc or a chisel plow you just tear it up and and replant. No objectivity in there.

nothing quantitative. You just do it because you're mad. And maybe that's not always a bad thing. Maybe it really is that poor. The second path could be that, you know, you have some kind of advisor on your farm. You have a seedman, you have a an agronomist who get out who they get out there and you kind of rely on them to help you with your scouting and they come back and tell you, I think you should replant that field.

Hopefully they have some kind of some kind of data that backs up that recommendation. The third path could be that you actually get out there and you measure off your thousandth of an acre and you count the plants and you come back and and look at the day that you planted, you look at the day that you're standing there in the field, and you come back to reference all these tables and charts that we're going to walk through to figure out whether or not you have an economic return from replanting.

Those are the three ways that this could happen. Hopefully, everybody chooses to do it the third way. Sometimes in the case of corn silage, maybe you say, Well, I just need forage and this stand it whether or not it's economical, I just I just need to fill my silo. And that's a little bit different of a scenario.

Dwane Miller (05:48)
One other factor and this leads back to a little bit of time that I spent in industry is especially when it came to soybeans, it was the year of the slug boy, what twenty twenty four, it was a slug apocalypse out there. And you know, there was replants happening left, right, twice.

I know I gave a recommendation, I'm like, go ahead replant, you know, they they can't possibly eat this crop again. And that was the third time went through. You know, and and in that case there there was there was some compensation in the in the form of seed that was furnished by that company. So that can be another factor in this whole game is is is do you have the availability to get that get that seed cost taken care of. Now

Here we are, rolling into Memorial Day weekend and and our slug counts are way, way down for this year. So we're crossing our fingers that we don't have that happen again.

Justin Brackenrich (06:47)
So, ⁓ you know, we we kind of alluded to this, and something we're trying to do better with on the show is actually give an action item, right? We kind of joke amongst ourselves or even externally that extensions always it depends on everything and and and we don't wanna but let's actually talk about the idea of how do we take this population stand. If if we've taken the emotion out, we we want to take that out. We wanna take all the the other factors out of this.

first we have to go out there we have to get a calculated method. Now, I think they're a little different for corn or soybeans, or at least the way I do it is. But Zack, what do you recommend is the method to actually assess stand population?

Zack Curtis (07:24)
Most of the fields that I look at are corn, and of course we're planting corn in 30 inch rows, and probably over 95% of the acres of corn in Pennsylvania are on 30 inch rows. So the easiest thing to do is just take a tape measure and stretch it out along the row. Now, I I reference this idea of a thousandth of an acre. That would be about 17 feet four inches. And sometimes people say 17 feet five inches.

Whether you do four or five inches, I don't think it matters. But, anyways, you stretch out of the tape measure 17 feet four inches, and you count the number of plants that are along that tape measure, along that measured area. If you multiply that by a thousand, that should give you a rough estimate of how many plants you have per acre. So I stretch out a tape measure. I count 32 plants. Rough estimate is I have 32,000 plants per acre. Ideally, I do this in at least three different places.

Depending on how that planner performed, depending on variability, pest pressure, maybe I gotta do it five or six or seven times to try to get an idea of what the whole field looks like. But certainly I don't want to just do it in one spot because that's not very representative of the whole field.

Justin Brackenrich (08:37)
Is when I go out in the field to do this, it is so hard for me to be like objectively neutral. Right? You say pick five areas that match the field. Well, you know, that is that is so hard for me to do. Do you have any advice on like 'cause I I know there's a big wet spot over here down offside the hill. I know the deer come out of the backside of this part. You know, ⁓ any advice on how you go out there and find your spots? Maybe you're just that much better.

Zack Curtis (09:02)
No, I wouldn't say it's that, Justin. Like don't don't sell yourself short here. I I think a good suggestion I I've seen ⁓ maybe from the Midwest is if you take a field overview of if you take an aerial map of a field, like from Google Maps or something, and you before you even leave your desk, if you're just sitting at the computer, try to put a couple dots on there, because then it kind of forces you to randomize how you approach your your assessment.

Because then you're then you're less likely to be biased by what you see when you pull in, right? If if I pull on the field and my first the first thing I see is, two big dead spots in it or two big gaps or whatever, well, right away I'm gonna be a little bit biased on how I approach that assessment.

Dwane Miller (09:49)
Something maybe I wanna touch on now or maybe we can circle back on is, you know, Justin just mentioned we have these fields that might have a a large wet spot or, one area atypical than another. we go out, how do we make that decision? Do we re replant re if we replant, do we replant spots in the field or do we just go hog wild and

go across that whole acreage.

Zack Curtis (10:14)
how about we come back to that idea?

Justin Brackenrich (10:15)
What about I have another method for doing beans. Dwane, how do you do ⁓ beans? Zack said he doesn't have a lot of beans where he is.

Dwane Miller (10:24)
So I'll go back to the extension answer, Justin. It depends. Okay. So for for me it it does depend on the method that they have used to plant. if they're using a planter, whether that be on fifteens or thirties, I use the tape measure method. If if they are drilled beans, I get out hey, it's been a while since I've used it, but I get out that old hula hoop. My hips can't take it anymore, but I do keep it in the closet just for accessing

Justin Brackenrich (10:28)
Perfect, that's great.

Dwane Miller (10:52)
a soybean stand. So I think that's a great way to to do a stand assessment for for soybeans in in a drilled situation is using a hula hoop. How about you? What do you what do you like to

Justin Brackenrich (11:03)
Yeah, that was I was kind of nudging in that direction, right? And and it's similar to what Zack was saying. they're they're different diameter hula hoops. Mine's a twenty eight inch, and so ⁓ kind of like Dwane, it fits a little snugger around my waist than it used to. ⁓ maybe I should bump up to a thirty or a thirty two. But I have a twenty eight inch hula hoop, and what that means is you throw it out randomly, you count the beans that are in it, and you multiply that by ten thousand. that's that's actually

a a fairly simple method as long as it's twenty eight inches. If you get to the twenty sixes or others, it's different.

Dwane Miller (11:35)
I was gonna say that so that that diameter of the hula hoop does make a big difference in that conversion factor. So yeah, you just said if you can get yourself a twenty eight inch or make yourself something that is twenty eight inches in in diameter, that that makes that conversion factor pretty easy.

Justin Brackenrich (11:53)
All right. What do you got, Dwane? What's what's our next question?

Dwane Miller (11:58)
so once we do that initial assessment, Zack, how do we make that decision once we've got our data?

Zack Curtis (12:07)
Okay, so the next thing and and this is very corn and bean specific now when we get to this point because the other thing that we're gonna look for is uniformity of planting and and whether we have skips or gaps. So corn, we know we get in most cases we get one very productive ear off that plant, and that's the driver for our yield throughout the field.

Because of that, corn is incredibly sensitive to large skips or gaps in the field. I think I I have a note here. There's a estimates from ⁓ Canada estimate that we lose approximately five to six percent of our yield if we have a number of gaps that exceed five feet. And actually, a five foot gap in the stand is really not that hard to to find if we have a lot of slug pressure, if we have wet spots, if we have poor slit closing or anything like that. So

These gaps, they really add up quickly and make a big difference. and actually I'll reference quick our crop conditions tour that we do every year ⁓ around the state. I a lot of times we find a final population of 28, 29, or 30,000 plants per acre, but because of these skips or because of later mergers, sometimes we only have 21 or 22,000 harvestable years per acre. so those later mergers.

really hurt in corn as well. In the soybean world, ⁓ we know that soybeans branch, typically they branch at the nodes, and that's where the pot is found. Because of that branching, they tend to thicken themselves up a little bit and they're not quite as sensitive to skips or gaps. so that's a very corn versus bean specific scenario you have to be careful of and you have to be you have to pay attention to when you're out there doing your initial assessment.

Dwane Miller (13:58)
So let me let me pitch something to you. So if somebody calls me and says, All right, I got I have I got a bean field. I I was tr I was very tempted I was out April fifteenth. We we did an early planting and ⁓ now here we are the end of May. Went out there and I've got we we dropped one seventy

I I ended up with with 80,000 here. what would you say to that?

Zack Curtis (14:27)
Well, if you crack open this article that we put together, what you'll find is we reference a whole bunch of tables from the agronomy guide. In the soybean section of our agronomy guide, and corn has a similar section too, we have these big sections here on replant decisions. And and so you said that you planted what, what'd you say, a hundred and

Dwane Miller (14:51)
One seventy was our one seventy was our drop, yeah.

Zack Curtis (14:54)
On April fifteenth. Yep. And you have how many now?

Dwane Miller (15:00)
Now you're making me think I should have written it down. ⁓ I I think it was eighty five thousand.

Zack Curtis (15:05)
Okay, so you have 85,000, and today we are standing on May 21st of 2026. So I'm gonna look in table 1.6-5 of our agronomy guide. The table is titled Approximate Yield Response of Soybean to Changes in Planting Date. So the first date listed here is May 10th. On May 10th, we estimate that we have full, we have 100% yield potential out of that field.

Really, you know, as long as you have a reasonable amount of plants per acre, because you got it in the ground early enough, you shouldn't see too much of a yield penalty. If you were to back that up and try to replant, I would guess that you're not gonna do that today. Judging by the long range forecast, you're probably not gonna do that for maybe another week.

Dwane Miller (15:57)
It'd probably be next next Wednesday, Thursday, somewhere in there till I could get back in the field.

Zack Curtis (16:03)
So that gets us awful close to the date of May 30th in table 1.6-5. Table on May 30th, we have an estimated yield potential of 95% of the full yield. So judging by that, okay, if your yield potential is 60 bushels per acre, if you leave it there, you could still get 60 bushels.

If you choose to replant, you're gonna lose five percent of your yield potential, which would bring you to closer to what's that, fifty-seven bushels per acre?

Now the other thing I I and I maybe I got ahead of myself, but you got to look at table one point six dash three as well. That's looking at plant population. So Dwane, are these drilled beans or planted beans?

Dwane Miller (16:49)
These were planter beans.

Zack Curtis (16:51)
Thirty inch rows.

Dwane Miller (16:53)
That's correct.

Zack Curtis (16:54)
Okay, now table one point six dash three also says that if I have a population of about eighty thousand plants per acre, planted on thirty inch rows, I could still recognize a hundred percent of my yield potential all the way down to eighty thousand plants per acre.

Dwane Miller (17:13)
Yep. And that was kind of what I was fishing for is that that number that we've floated around in some of our research that says, you know, if you've got a uniform stand of eighty thousand or so, you've got the potential for that hundred percent yield. And you don't have the cost of equipment going back in there. You don't have the potential cost of seed for a replant and

I I guess it really ties back to your f initial point, Zack, of taking the emotion out of the equation here and doing some some sound judgment and calculations.

Zack Curtis (19:02)
Yeah, and I I mean I'll I'll admit that kind of stinks, you know, from your end, because here half the seed that you plant actually grew. And maybe it makes you wonder if our seeding rates need to be as high as what we advertise sometimes. But you know, you lost half your population, but because you got it in the ground early, you still have a really, really good yield potential coming out of those beans. And you know, you get in that five, seven, ten percent.

Yield potential loss. Man, when grain prices get cheap like they are, you gotta really ask whether or not it's worth it to get into. And that's another factor that we, you know, now I'm just thinking of that's worth mentioning. You know, we're sitting at corn is what roughly under four dollars a bushel. Beans are not quite eleven dollars, I believe. that's the next factor that comes into this, and that's why we tried to tie it into the

in with this budget that we put at the end of this this article too, because there's there's a lot of different factors that tie into all this, you know. If grain prices being static and operational prices being static, it it really adds another layer of complexity to this decision.

Justin Brackenrich (20:12)
Zack, we've talked about and and I I assume the process to this mathematical walking through these tables is going to be similar for corn as it is for beans, right? You're looking at a function of total population and and yield, is that correct?

Zack Curtis (20:25)
Yeah, I would say in the corn tables, I think the corn tables are slightly more straightforward because it's it's one I'll call it like more like a matrix than trying to hunt through four or five different tables. Okay. if I'm looking at if I was gonna look at a field in Wayne County, I'd look at part B of table one point four dash eight. Assuming I planted a field at thirty thousand plants per acre.

I'm showing a yield potential of 95% if it was planted on May 14th. if I have a stand of 225 planted on May 14th, now I'm looking at 90% yield potential. And then if you kind of follow through those tables, the tables make a lot more sense when you work when you're looking at them than just sitting me sitting here trying to blab about them. But if you follow through those dates and

And look at, you know, compare one planting population on one date to another, I think they they're a little bit more intuitive than the soybean charts are.

Justin Brackenrich (21:25)
So

I wanna throw this out. We've talked about ⁓ how to measure, right? We've we've either taken our tape measured seventeen foot four inches, or our hula hoop. We've gotten the conversion, we've multiplied We took five spots at random. I really like that idea of of looking at your map or something, trying to get there at the house before you even biased yourself. I think that's that's a really neat idea. So we've done all that. We know where we're at. we went to our agronomy guide and we found that we are at like

55% yield production. You know, and I don't care if we talk about beans or corn first. Are there any changes that have to happen before we plant? Right? Let's say we planted three, two beans or, you know, a hundred and ten day corn. Do we just pull the same bag out and dump it in the planter and go back through Or do we consider other stuff?

Zack Curtis (22:15)
Okay, well the the next thing I the next thing I that that I ask is okay, why do you have such a poor stand? You know, maybe you planted maybe the weather was nice in April, you took a gamble, you planted, and you got smoked by a frost. Okay, well, probably, come May the risk of frost starts to decrease, and you know, you'd be safe with a replant because the risk of frost is gone. In other cases,

Maybe you didn't have your planter set up correctly. Maybe you switched seed and you forgot to make adjustments with your vacuum. Maybe you forgot to ⁓ pay attention to your planting depth, moving from no-till to till ground. Maybe you had some insects in there. Maybe you had to plant some untreated seed in a pinch, and you had some kind of early season disease or insects, insect pressure. I think it's really important to.

To try to figure out why you had those stand losses, because if that stand loss was due to I'll call it a management issue, most likely with planter performance, and you don't fix that issue, you're probably not going to see any benefit from replanting. if you're not getting good closing, if if you don't if you're not getting that furrow closed, if you're not getting seed deep enough.

if you're not getting adequate penetration through residue and you go out there and you do the same thing, you're gonna see the same results. And you're just gonna be out there spinning your wheels and spending money to see the same results. And now you're taking that yield penalty penalty from the later planting date.

Dwane Miller (23:54)
Now there's one management consideration. Now hey, not saying I ever ever did this, but you know, switching to planner from corn to beans, you know, we might have maybe got beans in at a you know twenty eight thousand rate using the corn sprockets and coming up, you're going, ⁓ boy, what do we what do we do here? You know? ⁓ try to thicken that stand up. So but under understood and and very good point. Though you know, if the if there are true planner performance issues

That don't get addressed in this whole process. that's like that quote about insanity, you know, doing the same thing and expecting a different result again.

Zack Curtis (24:30)
yeah. And if let's say you're planting a lot of acres and you got some rocky soil, maybe you tweaked your ⁓ maybe you tweaked your fertilizer placement and now you got one row that you're dropping fertilizer right on the row and you know you're burning the heck out of it with all that salt and the fertilize you've you know, simple things like that. You gotta check everything over and figure out what's going on, otherwise you'll be in the same boat and dealing with the yield penalty from from the later planting date.

Justin Brackenrich (24:58)
When I first started with extension, almost eight years ago, within the first couple months, so I started in November that next spring, I got called to come out and look at a replant stand, right? This is this is my sidebar. and I called one of our friends of the show, senior educator Del Voigt, and I said, Dell, you know, I'm going out here, I've done some research. what do you look at? And he said, Start with the planter, right? so many times, and I'm not saying the planter was bad, but

Look at seed placement. Look at the travel. Look at what they use. Make sure that everything's lined up and you got the rows covered, right? Because so many times if it's slugs, well, we didn't plant it at the right conditions or we didn't get row closure. So we end up with slugs. And and so much of this goes back to the planter. And I I think of that advice often when I'm looking at someone doing replants is ⁓ we've got a lot of really good technology in our seeds and our seed treatments and stuff like that that these companies

they know how to get seeds out of the ground, right? And and how do we assess this problem and it's sometimes it's hard to point our finger back at ourselves, you know, and and maybe Dwane's scenario of accidentally planting having the wrong sprocket in there. But, you know, we want to blame someone else 'cause daggone it, I know it wasn't my fault. but but sometimes that's just the reality of what we're doing.

Zack Curtis (26:10)
Yeah, the the first corn emergence issue I I ever went out on again involved a phone call to Del Voigt, involved the same answer. Look at the planter. Yeah. we had rye cover crop, just terrible penetration through that through that rye mat. but looking at it functionally, everything on the planter looked good. We just couldn't get the planter through that mat. talking to the grower after a f

Finally, after a while, he goes, you know, he goes, This is the first year I never put starter fertilizer in my planter. Well, you get a planter that has, five hundred pound hopper on on either side of it. Well, now we're missing a half a ton of weight to give them all that down pressure. And so, you know, instead, the next best solution on the replant was to throw a couple rolls of bale wrap in those hoppers just to get some weight on the thing. Because if he did it again,

He would have had another 17 acres of corn seed sitting on the soil surface. So it never hurts to ask because sometimes if you talk to other people, sometimes you won't always get an answer, but you will get a question. And sometimes that question is more value because our conversation led him to question something.

And even though I didn't have the answer for him that day, I couldn't tell him why why he had problems. Talking to him forced him to a to to you know question what happened earlier that season. He came to that answer himself. He said, ⁓ I didn't have enough weight in the planner. just spitballing back and forth with somebody sometimes

Dwane Miller (27:46)
Another another set of eyes or ears or something like that can can lead itself into self discovery of of what can happen. So, all right, we talked a lot about let's calculate a potential yield, a potential replant yield. But Zack, in your article you do talk about there are other factors in this that we have to consider if we are gonna try to make a replant. And can you tell us about some of those other factors?

Zack Curtis (28:14)
Yeah, we're talking about cost. Great. I'm so happy that we talk about cost because quite frankly, I think it's something we don't talk enough about. We think about it a lot, but we don't do we actually sit down and calculate it out? I I'm I don't know. One thing I tried to show in this replan article is is we threw a section here about finances and and how does this impact the economics of your farm? So

What we did we to we took everything that was covered earlier in that article. We looked through these yield scenarios, understanding that you can come in and replant, but it's not it's not gonna happen for free. At minimum, we're gonna have to figure out some kind of planting operation. So that's running a tractor and a planter through the field, whether it's our own machinery, whether it's a custom hire.

When we did this, we used 2022 PA custom higher rates. planting was about $28 an acre. So right away there, If corn is four dollars, right away we'd have to see a seven bushel response to cover the cost of that planting operation. Now, in corn, we're typically better off terminating that stand because if we get

corn that's V4, V five, when we go in there and replant, we're gonna have, plants acting as weeds. Corn, I wouldn't recommend trying to go in there and replant in the existing stand. It's better to terminate it. And we have some notes in here about chemical termination oper options. Obviously, tillage without t termination is is really easy and self-explanatory. But if we're gonna terminate corn,

It's probably going to cost us a couple bucks to run a sprayer through the field. depending on what chemistry we have to use, we might be pushing about $30 an acre just to terminate that corn stand. So again, there's another seven and a half bushels that we have to see in return in order to cover termination.

You may be able to replant if we were using starter, you may be able to follow the old row. You may decide that you don't need starter because now it's June and the soil's warm. I don't know. That's up to you to decide. In some cases, you might get seed for free from your dealer. Maybe they'll cover you on a replant. Maybe they'll tell you that you're on your own. I don't know. It all depends on

On what kind of relationship you have with your seed man and how good they are at writing up a replant. But we have to factor in seed costs too. we could see seed costs about 120, 140 dollars an acre to get 30 some thousand plant or seeds per acre dropped out there in the field. Because of that, we compare that back to our expected yield difference from the replant.

And the budget that we have here tries estimate those net returns over establishment costs to try to calculate or help you estimate whether or not you're going to see a financial impact from that replant. And like I said.

Earlier, grain prices are not static. Operational prices are not static. We're looking at fuel prices that it, you know, they're creeping up towards the sixes, along with other input costs. you really got to sit down and figure out year to year whether or not a replant is going to pay or not. And we try to give you the tools to calculate that. That's why this is such a complicated process. But I think if you sit down and do a little bit of homework prior to, you can figure out.

Pretty quickly whether or not it's worth your time and

Dwane Miller (31:38)
one one of the things that I I think about too if if I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna replant, I may have a later maturing variety now. if I want to get those beans off and I want to put wheat out, I might have some additional drying costs that I may not have had in the in the past with a with my normal stand. So I think that's something to keep in mind too.

Zack Curtis (32:01)
Yep. obviously I I spoke about corn for grain, corn for silage, again, it's a different animal. Maybe you back down your relative maturity four or five units, depending on how late you are. So that way you can still get a crop chopped off the field, before it gets frosted and you know everything's ready in a day after it gets frosted. Beans, I think, are kind of tricky.

Sometimes in beans we can fill in the gaps. I guess I don't have any specific suggestions for beans. I there's a lot of personal opinions that float around beans, but you can tend to fill in the gaps a little bit better with beans than you can with corn, just because they're a little bit more flexible on how they ⁓ now if if you start off by planting you know a a three eight bean on April 15th.

I don't know that it's wise to come in and try to fill in the gaps on June sixth with the three two bean. I think that's gonna get a little complicated come harvest time. but Dwane, I don't know, maybe you have a little bit more suggestion on that front.

Dwane Miller (33:03)
No, I think in soybeans it becomes more of an art in in trying to f f calculate and facilitate some of this stuff. And like you say, I know my time in industry there, you look at a couple stands and you're like, you know, is it is it worth a full replant? Or do we want to just kind of thicken up somebody's areas where it just doesn't look so good? And sometimes it lends itself to one, sometimes it's the other.

Not hard and fast.

Zack Curtis (33:33)
The other thing I will say, because the silage growers are a little bit near and dear to my heart because I'm a livestock man myself. One thing you should think about is if you're considering a replant for silage, especially when we get into early June, data from the University of Wisconsin suggests that you can plant silage all the way up to about June 15th, and you can still achieve 100% yield.

potential with that late planting. However, it's not always guaranteed. The rate, of success or the yield potential is is much the window is much smaller with early planting. Now you start getting too late into June and even in early June that that yield potential can range anywhere between I think it's like 65 and 100%. it's not as secure. It's not as stable.

as early planting. If you're concerned about inventory losses, that's something that you should have on your mind in July. Okay. If you're concerned that you're not going to have the, a thousand tons of silage or whatever you need to carry your herd over for the year, July, August is the time to to get out and start talking to neighbors. See if anybody's got a cornfield nearby that you can chop. Maybe you'll buy some hay. The cheapest time

To take care of that crop is when it's still standing in the field. you don't have to negotiate with anybody for harvest costs or storage costs. Maybe you can run it with your own equipment, harvest it. Maybe you can buy corn, grain at harvest to try to supplement what you're going to lose in starch from reduced corn silage yields. But certainly if you're concerned about forage inventory shortages, get it started, get started on that early.

July and August you should be out there thinking about that stuff, at least trying to secure inventory.

Justin Brackenrich (35:18)
So Zack, as we move to a close, you've shared a ton of information with us. We're very thankful for that. The last step that I I think I want to ask is is there a magic number, generally speaking, that when you would want to replant? Right. So I guess I'm thinking in my head, you talked about, well, this one's at ninety percent, ninety four percent, nine is there some kind of number in there that should key you off of hey, I'm I'm thinking about a replant or at least a loss percentage that it starts to pay to replant?

Zack Curtis (35:45)
I would think you know ninety ish percent. And again, it goes back to that planting date and the seed costs. I mean there's a hundred and thirty dollars an acre potentially. if your dealer's gonna hit you with that that seed cost, well, maybe it doesn't s look so that's yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I can I think I can

Dwane Miller (36:02)
Stand doesn't look so bad now, right?

Zack Curtis (36:07)
Yeah, it looks good by the road and I think I could live with that for the rest of the summer.

Justin Brackenrich (36:12)
All right, Zack. We appreciate you joining us today. If anyone has questions for Zack, the article will be in the show notes. You can look at him there. his contact will be at the bottom of the article as an author. We encourage you to reach out and have a conversation with him about any replants. Again, that Zack, thanks for joining us. ⁓ we'll see you next time. So, Dwane, we're starting a new idea here of what did we learn during this this session, right? So

what was one of the takeaways you have from listening to Zack talk about replants?

Dwane Miller (36:40)
I think for me, Justin, is try to figure out what was the initial cause of that cause of that stand loss to begin with, right? we have to be able to pinpoint what's going on. Now, sometimes when it comes to slugs, that's a pretty easy catch right there. You go out there, you see you you diagnose the injury, but

If there are underlying causes and especially like Zack mentioned, planter performance issues, that's one where I think we can all do a better job with is looking at our planner. How about for you, Justin?

Justin Brackenrich (37:14)
Yeah, so so I've I'm I'm developing a catchphrase, right, in this idea of you can grow more corn than me, but I can grow it cheaper. Right. And and I think that's like becoming this this whole theme of what we're doing and what Zack is mentioning. Yeah, you can go in and you can replant those corn or you can replant those beans, but can you do it cost effectively? And and I think so much of this is it's not just I walked out in here, it looks thinner than the one beside of it, let's just add more stuff to it.

you really have to start sharpening that pencil. You really have to put it down and you have to think about is it gonna pay? And we have to quit thinking about, well, this the neighbors see this one, right? This is the field that's out by the fairgrounds or this is you know, and and start thinking about how we're gonna be profitable at the end of the year.

Dwane Miller (37:59)
You're right. Cause in the at the end of the day, to me, it all comes down to economics, right?

Justin Brackenrich (38:04)
Yeah. Dwane, thanks for joining me. This has been a great episode. Until next time, thanks for listening to the Agronomy Highlights podcast and we'll we'll see you around.

Dwane Miller (38:13)
Take care.