When the race to plant crops gets underway in your area this spring, take care to not stumble at the starting gate, advises Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.
One way to start strong is to evaluate weather and soil conditions to determine whether they’re signaling you have a red, green or yellow light for field work and planting.
“We don’t let the calendar, the coffee shop or neighbors dictate when we go to the field,” Ferrie says. “We do our own investigating and check all soil types, especially those in the lower topography parts of the field.”
Here are four considerations as you prepare for #planting2025:
1. Do The Ribbon Test
Jumping the gun with spring tillage and planting is costly. Ferrie points out that 80% of the compaction service calls he goes on each year can trace their roots back to the first pass the farmer made in the spring.
“Compaction put in by a field cultivator is a bad gift that keeps on giving all year long. You can’t take this gift back and get a redo,” he says.
Before you take off with spring tillage or plant, he advises checking conditions just under your tillage depth. It’s a practice that he calls making a soil ribbon.
Here are three simple steps to make a Soil Ribbon:
a. If you usually run a tillage tool 4” deep, take a shovel and dig down under that to about 5” deep.
b. Collect some soil in your hand and attempt to ball it up. If the soil is wet, it will readily ball up.
c. Once you get the soil balled up, squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger to see if you can make a ribbon about 1½” long.
“If you can make a ribbon, your tillage will not only put in a density change, but it will also put in a compaction layer. That’s a red light,” Ferrie says. “If you decide to move forward with tillage and planting, you probably will need to adjust your yield expectations later in the season as well as your marketing plan.”
Ferrie adds he has known growers who spent a lot of money and time the previous fall with deep tillage that got wiped out by one bad tillage pass the following spring. Don’t be that farmer this season.
2. Know the germ quality of your soybean and corn seed.
That can help you determine planting order or whether you need to check in with your seed supplier about making a product switch, notes Missy Bauer, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in south-central Michigan, near Coldwater.
Bauer says farmers are finding soybean seed is a mixed bag quality-wise this season, because of dry weather conditions that hammered much of the Midwest in 2024.
“Some of the seed that was harvested for soybeans last fall was under pretty dry conditions, 8%, 9% moisture, things like that,” she reports. “So, the seed quality this year has just been real up and down. We’ve had beans that are just awesome seed quality. And then we get another batch that comes in that’s got issues.”
For growers who might not have tested their soybean seed, she would say see what the cold germ scores are, because of the variation in quality.
“If you’re going to plant early, you want to know it can handle germinating in cold conditions, so we really encourage guys get seed tested,” she says.
With seed corn, if you have seed that tests on the lower end of saturated cold score ranges, Ferrie says to plant that seed once conditions will enable the crop to emerge in five to six days.
“You guys putting starter in-furrow, keep in mind that severe pericarp damage scores tend to lead to more starter burn issues,” he adds. “When it comes to corn stands, many issues are solved when we plant corn based on soil conditions and not the calendar. This could be your highest-yielding corn crop of your career. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot before we start.”
Here are some additional thoughts on how to Test Your Seed Before Planting To Avoid Quality Issues
3. Avoid Corn Seed Chilling
To avoid seed chilling, Ferrie advises farmers to plant corn only under two conditions. First, check to see that the soil temperature is 50 degrees F or higher, and second, you want a promising weather forecast in the days following planting.
“One of the challenges of planting in soils that are 45° or lower is seed chilling,” Ferrie says. “When the corn seed imbibes moisture, the temperature of the water it takes in has an effect on the seed itself. Water under 50° means that when swelling takes place the cells aren’t as elastic and they tear, which can cause disoriented mesocotyl, no sprouting, etc. It might not kill the plant completely but effects could show up in ear count.”
Corn requires approximately 120 accumulated growing degree days (GDDs) to emerge, under ideal conditions. To calculate GDDs, you can use this equation: GDD = (Daily Maximum Air Temperature + Daily Minimum Temperature)/2 – 50.
He says the first 48 hours after planting corn are most critical. Seed that is subject to cold during that period of time is most vulnerable to chilling. When that occurs, the metabolic reactions necessary for emergence don’t take place in a timely manner.
“Cold seed corn is unable to swell in the ground with the same elasticity as it’s able to achieve with soil temperatures at 50° F or warmer,” Ferrie explains.
When corn emergence isn’t timely, yield potential is docked and you won’t get it back.
“Chilling can eliminate between 10% and 20% of your yield potential,” says Ferrie “You’ll never see that loss driving down the road, but you will if you stretch a tape measure for ear counts.”
4. Plant Soybeans Ahead Of Corn
If your weather conditions and soil temperatures turn unfavorable for corn, consider whether you can plant soybeans.
If the ground is fit, Ferrie would give farmers a green light to plant their full-season soybeans. Ferrie says Group 4s, mid-Group 3 and late-Group 3 soybeans need about 950 growing degree days (GDDs) pre-solstice. Early to mid-Group 3 soybeans need about 810 GDDs.
“We try to get those fuller season beans planted here by April 18,” he says. “With those earlier Group 3s and later Group 2s, maybe shoot for the planting timeframe of April 25 to May 4.”
For more insights on picking the right maturity for your soybean planting window, Ferrie recommends checking out the information from Crop-Tech Consulting Agronomist Matt Duesterhaus. You can find his recommendations here.
Your next read: 300-Bu. Corn Has a Big Appetite for N, P and K
