Drew S.
Apr 3, 2026
Drought, Planting Dates, and Planter Evaluation
Have you evaluated your planter?
Incorrect planter settings is the fastest way to lose yield right from the start of the season. So we decided to do a row-by row planter study where we compared the yield of each row across the planter of two different planters to see just how much variability there is. Both planters were thought to have been set correctly at the start of the season and one planter even had all new wear parts installed. Here's what we did...
In the spring, we did emergence flagging on each row across both planters (1/1000th of an acre length). We then hand harvested and hand shelled all the ears collected in the fall and took moisture readings to give us a yield per row. The results were very surprising as we did not expect to see so much yield variation.
The two graphs below show the results of our study...
By doing this study, we are able to now go back to our planters over the winter and look specifically at the rows that were performing "below average" and go over them with a fine tooth comb to figure out what component of the planter or row unit needs adjust or changing to add more bushels to that specific row.
Below each row on each graph is a corresponding ear count which shows how many ears were hand harvested in that row to get that yield number. In most cases, the lower the ear count, the lower the yield (pretty obvious, right?). But what we also noticed that on the rows with lower ear counts, there were some plants that emerged so late, that they didn't have a harvestable ear on them. In this instance, if the population is correct, but emergence was off, then that leaves planting depth and/or closing system as the culprit. Not to say that the planting depth or closing system is always the issue, but we would have no idea that there was an issue on some of these rows without harvesting each row individually. The corn head gives you an average yield across all the rows that it harvests, which means you would NEVER see this variation.
Picking a field or two to do this on in 2026 is highly encouraged as we would be more than happy to help answer any questions with how to go about evaluating your planter and how to bring more bushels to your farm in a cost effective manner.
Thanks for reading!