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Late soybeans? Plant them
An agronomist says farmers should go ahead and plant their soybeans as soon as the soil is dry enough, even though it’s mid-June.
Tony Lenz, an agronomist with Stine Seed tells Brownfield in most cases, farmers should not switch to a shorter-season soybean variety. “If your range in your area is a 2.0 to a 2.8, something like that, we’re probably going to plant right in the middle, a 2.4, and some areas as we keep pushing later and later as we go south, we’re actually going the other way. We’ll will go to the extreme high on their maturity.”
Lenz says soybeans that were planted earlier are starting to flower, but he says the regular-maturity soybeans planted late will benefit from those long, sunny days. “What we’re trying to do is get as maximum height out of that bean that we can, and that later maturity is going to give us that height, and then we also want to up our population with our growers or keep it at the high side of population. What we’re trying to do is get those beans to elongate as much as they can and get as many nodes on that plant as we can.”
Lenz says late planted soybeans will benefit from higher seed populations. He says at this time, it’s all about getting the soybeans as tall as they can be as fast as possible and getting more nodes on the plants for the most possible beans.
AUDIO: Tony Lenz with Stine Seed discusses late planting soybeans with Brownfield’s Larry Lee
