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Thumb of Michigan | The plants were spaced pretty evenly. My planter has 3 transmissions, so it was fairly easy to try. Downside is, the middle 4 may or may not have had effect from the tires. I stated planted pops, haven't got the final stand data yet. I would expect that the final is "typical" for planted vs actual. But yes, I felt that all the rates were uniform.
As far as narrower rows- haven't did any side by sides in a couple of years. We did some plots for 3 or 4 years, and generally I saw no difference in 15 vs 30 yield wise. We have had as much as a 10% reduction with 15's, but there could have been lots of different factors that caused that. We ALWAYS took a yield hit with 7.5's. We think we can capture much more sunlight with the 30's vs 15's, but that statement is always controversial. The guys here with 22" rows kind of feel that they're at the narrowest they want to be.
For me, I generally put economics first when looking at a practice, not nessesarily yield. We don't feel we plant enough soy acres to justify another peice of equipt for soys. We do, in fact, own half of a JD 1560 drill. Ourselves and a neighbor bought it together to plant wheat. As I no longer plan on wheat in my rotation, we'll be selling our half this fall. I haven't seen the drill in a year now. The neighbor we own it with happens to plant 22" row crops, they've not seen the economics of using the 1560 for soys either. Their plots have shown similar results to mine with 30" rows.
But that all isn't why I posted. Myself, I thought that there would be a difference in yield, but they were all much closer than I anticipated. I agree with your assesmant of gaps, I think that would have made a bigger difference than lower pops. | |
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soy bean population plot
