Post Planting Management Drives Yield

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Welcome to this week’s episode of the EZAg Podcast, where innovative farming meets practical solutions. I’m your host, Matt Long, and this week we’re going to finish off our series on the top five factors to produce a top crop. Our focus today is on factor No. 5: post-planting management.

I’ll jump back and briefly introduce the top five factors to produce a top crop. If you haven’t been following along in the series, it would be a good idea to go back and listen to the last two EZAg episodes to learn about factors No. 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The top five factors to produce a top crop are:

• Soil conditions at planting time

• Seed placement

• Seed quality

• Right hybrid, right field

• Post planting management

Today, we’re covering post planting management.

Post planting management involves protecting and pushing yield. There are many factors that go into this, including weeds, disease, insects, and abiotic stresses like heat and drought.

What do we do from a post planting management standpoint that makes such a difference? One of the key things we do is go out into the field not long after the planter has been through, around V4 to V6 in corn, and evaluate our stand. We want to understand our potential yield on a bushels per 1,000 plants basis.

We do this because we know we need to protect the crop from weeds, disease, and insects, but how much time and effort we invest depends on how even our stand is.

Stand consistency determines how many bushels per 1,000 plants we can achieve.

When conditions are right, we can achieve more. The key question is how many bushels per 1,000 plants we can expect based on the stand we have.

We’ve focused on all the factors at planting, including soil conditions, seed placement, seed quality, and selecting the right hybrid for the right field. If we’ve done those things correctly, we should be maximizing our bushels per 1,000 plants.

We evaluate the crop early so we can make more informed decisions later in the season. This helps us determine whether to continue investing in the crop or pull back if the yield potential is not there.

We decide whether to push a crop harder with additional inputs and protection based on stand consistency and early bushels per 1,000 plant readings.

We know we need to control weeds, but if a field has poor consistency and low yield potential, we are less likely to invest in high-cost rescue herbicide applications. On the other hand, if a field has excellent stand consistency and high yield potential, we will continue to invest in herbicide applications because the crop is worth it.

Another example is the fertility plan. Post planting management is where we can put that plan into action. If we have a high-consistency stand with strong yield potential, we may apply additional fertility later in the season to push yield even further.

Post planting management is the stage where we evaluate the crop and decide how much to invest moving forward, or whether to take a more conservative approach.

I'm glad you've joined us for these three episodes in this series. If, if you're just catching this one, like I said, jump back and listen to the last two episodes that covered factors 1, 2, 3, and 4, and learn a little bit more about how we use these, these things that we can control to get that more consistent stand to get that higher bushels per thousand plant rating, and to grow your yield, to grow your farm, grow your legacy with Axis Seed.