A lot of weather extremes have led to replanting, but on agronomist says that before you rush into the decision you need to check what your growing-degree days have been.
According to Dr. Jim Smart, “If it’s been cool and damp, and we haven’t accumulated at least 115 or 120 growing-degree days, it may not have enough warm temperatures to get the plants to emerge. Now, if we’ve exceeded those numbers for growing-degree days, then we can look and see what is the issue and why they’re not coming up. And sometimes, different varieties are just a little bit slow coming up, or perhaps that cold germ’s a little weak, but they’re still coming. They just haven’t emerged yet. If we do have to replant, we hate to replant if you’re 25 or 30 days past the rest of the field, you’re quite a bit behind on your maturity if you wait that long.”
Dr. Smart says that another aspect for farmers to consider is how much needs to be replanted because it is difficult to do one litter corner of a field.
“So usually, we need an area and it might be 40 acres out of 160 or something, that’s okay to just replant that portion. When we start trying to scab in or just doing the end rows, generally it’s not very successful, and then we have plants that are way behind,” Dr. Smart explains. “So, we’ll either have wet grain or will have with soybeans, sometimes the other soybeans are ready to start popping out while the replant isn’t even mature yet. It’s better to select a uniform area, whether it’s a square or rectangle, and just do a whole field or a big portion of it and mark it.”
He adds that there are many other factors to consider including hybrid variability and fertilizer application.
