The agronomic decisions you make now can help or hinder soybean growth and development for the rest of this season and into harvest. If you’re trying to decide whether to replant soybeans, following last week’s frost, consider these three scenarios:
Scenario No. 1: You had frost but still have between 80,000 and 90,000 viable plants.
If you can get over the emotional need to replant, you’re probably money ahead to leave that crop in the ground, says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech, Inc., Heyworth, Ill.
Your main challenge with that number of viable plants is making sure you keep weeds in check.
“Most growers are OK adding another herbicide pass rather than having to replant,” Ferrie says.
“While checking fields last week, it was evident that the guys who lived through the May 9 freeze of last year – and got to see how amazing those beans were at harvest – know how beans can recover,” he adds. “Those guys were calmer, able to wait for the regrowth and willing to accept lower final stands.”
That’s not the case, he says, for growers who planted early soybeans for the first time this year.
Scenario No. 2: You had frost, 80,000 to 90,000 plants survived, but you went in and interplanted, and now you’re facing a final population of 240,000 plants.
In this scenario, you won’t have to worry about late-season weeds. That high population will keep them in check, Ferrie says.
He says you might consider changing herbicide chemistries from what you used with the first planting and go in and take out the old stand, so the new stand flourishes.
The reason: in interplanted fields above a 200,000-plant population, you are going to lose some yield with those thick stands.
“The soybeans get tangled up during grain fill and go down, and that causes poor fill,” Ferrie explains.
In those fields with large soybean populations, he adds: “Don’t be afraid to light them up with a burner as that’ll help shorten them up a little (and improve pod numbers).”
One other consideration. If you interplant in an effort to improve weed control, make sure you consider the impact of driving across those stands.
“Remember, some of the existing plants will be killed as you run the planter and tractor across that crop as the growing point for soybeans is above ground,” Ferrie says. “I’d hate for you to go to all that work and still have weeds at the end.”
Scenario No. 3. You have low-lying fields and lost about 90% of your soybean crop to frost. In that scenario, Ferrie advises that you replant for a full stand.
Overall, Ferrie says he is seeing some excellent soybean and corn crops in the field this season and less replant than usual.
For more about replanting and addressing early-season pest control, listen to the Boots In The Field podcast here:
Boots in the Field: Collect Data Now to Inform Planting Decisions
Strobilurin-Resistant Frogeye Leaf Spot Threat from Delayed Soybean Planting
Delayed soybean planting: burndown large marestail this late?
