In the rush to get early soybeans planted, here are five questions to ask yourself prior to putting seed in the ground:
1. Are you using seed treatments to protect the crop?
Early-planted soybeans often stay in the ground up to 25 days, which makes them more vulnerable to disease and insect pressure. Seed treatments can mitigate a lot of risk.
“Today we have fungicides and insecticides to protect those beans at planting, which we didn’t have 10 years ago,” says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in central Illinois.
Pest pressure is typically higher early in the growing season as soil and air temperatures warm, triggering life cycles for not only freshly planted soybean seeds, but also pathogens, insects, and nematodes that feed on newly germinated seedlings, adds Jacquie Holland, an economist with the American Soybean Association (ASA).
Holland reports that a 2024 ASA/United Soybean Board survey done with 491 growers indicates 90% of U.S. soybean acres are planted with treated seeds. Only 3% of respondents had never planted any treated soybean seeds.
Fungicides and insecticides are the most widely used seed treatments with 72% and 66%, respectively, of farmers surveyed by ASA indicating these products are applied before planting.
2. Are you a one planter operation?
That will determine whether you have the capacity or equipment to plant soybeans and corn at the same time, if soil and weather conditions permit planting both.
You want to be able to plant corn when conditions are right. Never delay corn planting.
“Once conditions are ideal, you must plant corn,” Ferrie says. “If you miss the sweet spot, you could lose a ½ bu. to 1 bu. of corn per acre for each day’s delay.”
There are various solutions to potential planting bottlenecks. For instance, you can plant soybeans, switch to corn when conditions are right and then finish soybeans whenever you can.
“That mitigates risk by spreading out soybean maturity,” Ferrie says.
Learn more about how to address labor and equipment needs at Eight Steps to Early Soybean Planting
3. Have you considered soybean variety planting order?
Ferrie recommends going with your fullest season beans first and saving shorter season beans for planting later. It sounds counterintuitive, but there are good reasons for that advice.
“Based on our observations, we must plant full-season soybeans early enough to reach at least the three-trifoliate stage before the pre-solstice nights get too short,” Ferrie says. “There’s more time to get your short-season varieties planted early because they need fewer hours of darkness to trigger flowering.”
If early planted soybeans don’t get big enough to start flowering before the solstice, they will produce tall plants and that’s not necessarily a positive.
“The plants will continue to grow, adding vegetative stages until they reach R5 because flowering will be delayed until the nights get long enough after the solstice to trigger the reproductive stage. Tall plants don’t correlate with a yield increase. In two decades of studies, we have seen shoulder-high soybean plants lodge more often and yield less than waist-high plants,” Ferrie says.
4. Is your weed-control program in order?
“With early planting, the time frame for applying burndown, preplant and pre-emergence soybean herbicides is likely to coincide with corn planting,” says Ferrie.
“If your custom applicator is applying preplant and pre-emergence herbicides on corn, he might not want to stop, clean out a sprayer and apply soybean herbicides. I’ve seen soybean planting delayed three weeks while growers waited for a burndown herbicide application,” he adds.
Along with that, you also might need to consider a different option, such as using a pre-emergence soil-applied herbicide with residual control, Ferrie says, as a for instance.
“Follow that with a post-emergence application, applied a little earlier than you are used to. You might need to include a residual herbicide in the post-emergence treatment.”
5. Are you prepared to give soybeans a helping hand?
As soybeans try to emerge they may need some help if the surface crust is hard, meaning you might need to run a rotary hoe. If your hoe has been sitting in a shed forever, now’s the time to get it ready.
“We always say ‘hoe before you know,’” Ferrie says. “When you know you’re already in trouble with the crust, that’s when it’s usually getting too late to get the full benefit out of a rotary hoe. With these prices, you need to play every card you’ve got to add yield,” he says.
The same “hoe before you know” principle applies equally well to corn crops. You can learn more about the process from Ferrie’s video on YouTube Hoe Before You Know
