Many farmers in north central and eastern Iowa and across the FS System are finished planting for 2016. Now it's time to do stand establishment evaluations. This is important for many reasons. Stand establishment will be the first benchmark to achieving your yield goals. Unlike planting time and many other yield limiting factors that are often heavily influenced by Mother Nature, plant population is a yield determining factor controlled by the farmer. To evaluate your plant stands, here are the tools you will need. A tape measure, note pad and pen. First, take your tools and go out into your field and find an area of the field that represents a planter pass. An accurate estimate of plant population per acre can be obtained by counting the number of plants in a length of row equal to 1/1000th of an acre. Count the number of emerged corn plants, then multiply this number by 1,000. Make at least five counts in separate sections of the field and then calculate the average of the five counts. This is your average plant population for the field being evaluated. The goal is to be at 97-100% of the desired plants contributing to yield. 

Row width:        Length of single row to equal 1/1000th of an acre

• 15 inch.                      34 feet, 10 inches
• 20 inch.                      26 feet, 2 inches
• 30 inch.                      17 feet, 5 inches
• 36 inch.                      14 feet, 6 inches

Take time to walk your fields and evaluate how well your planter performed this season. There are many other planting outcomes to evaluate like plant emergence, spacing and later after V3 nodal root development. Contact your FS Crop Specialist and GROWMARK Agronomist to help get more perspective on what you can work on to improve the yield limiting factors you can control.

Originally published in the Iowa Spokesman, Bob Barker serves the FS System as GROWMARK's Senior Field Sales Agronomist. He can be reached at [email protected]