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| WE plant most of our corn at 37,500, mainly good soils with high fertility, in 30" rows One of the reasons we started pushing planting pops, use to be around 32,50 was we were seeing better yields on the inside endrows where we didn't get the planter raised or lowered as exactly at the first row and where we had overrun on pointrows.
The first year I farmed, 1971, I planted my corn at 26,500 while the standard around here was around 21,000. An old farmer stopped by one day and said "son, you're just going to have nubbins if it doesn't rain" I replied that you had to have a stalk to get an ear and we left it at that. That summer wasn't dry but we didn't have any excess moisture either. He stopped by that fall when we were shelling and rode a couple rounds & couldn't believe the yields we were getting. The next year I noticed that his populations went up.
I saw the Pioneer article. That may be a little extreme. I'll re;late another experience. We use to put out a test plot for P though we weren't a dealer, just farmed for a dealer. Planting was running behind so the dealer decided he would plant the plot using our old IH 400 planter that we used for sweet corn patches. Iset the planter up for the population he wanted & set the air pressure. When he started planting he decided it wasn't set right, he had only been around green planters, so jacked the air pressure way up not knowing the air guage always read under what the psi actually was.
When the plot came up it varied from 40,000 to 45,000. He tried hoeing it to thin it without much luck. The balance of the field, 100 ac, was planted at 34,500 with our regular planter. That fall all the hybrids in the plot yielded as well or better than the rest of the field except one. That hybrid just happened to be what the balanace of the field was and yielded 43 bpa less than the field. Like I told the dealer, that's one number that you sure don't want to push the populations in. Can't remember the hybrid but was one of their most popular in this area. | |
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Pioneer newsletter about corn populations.
