soybean population

Womder what kninda crop i will get? / Just finished planting beans and have calculated that 100,000 beans per acre were planted,, Thought I had it aset for 165,000. guess will cross hatch with the corn planter .........

Last year I planted 120 thousand in thirty inch rows and they yielded a little over 58 bushels per acre. It depends on how evenly spaced they are, but I wouldn't worry yet. Beans have great ability to compensate for low populations.
Joe

Beans do have the ability to flex for a lighter population- way more than corn does. Usually good to go into a field of known size with a full planter, then track how much it takes to refill. Doing the math, knowing the seeds per pound, gives a fair idea of how your actual compares to the setting. Even after replacing my JD cups with Kinze meters, I still do the math to reassure myself of the numbers. Supposed to get only one chance to plant each year.

I think the economic impact starts at 90,000 or less but hey, I am old and the memory is soaked.

I have heard many times if you plant beans at 50% population you will get 90% of yield.

Not that extreme, but sounds like me using a Hiniker air drill. I liked it, but with different size beans, etc. I couldn't nail down that population. Sold it. Going to use a planter next year. That unknown thing kept me up at night wondering how much I was actually putting down. To the other end, I tried 210,000 or so behind my house to see what that does. Right beside it is 160,000, all on 18" rows. We'll see....

Depends on your part of the country,
Here in western Iowa need 100,000 live stand to get 100% crop most of the time. Need 125,000 live plants to get 100% of the crop all of the time. I shoot for 140,000 live plants, seem to need to plant at 165,000 or so to get that.

Depends if you planted or drilled, there will be more loss with drilled beans, but I would bet you won"t have much more than 85,000 if you only planted 100,000.

I would interplant in another 50,000 or so for sure, make sure you do it before the plants are comming up or after they have been up for a week or so, otherwise you will wreck a lot of plants

Kevin

I think i'd wait and check my population. JMO
i planted 114,000 last year and saw no yield drag. I was unimpressed on the shadeing of the rows and did switch to a bushier type bean this year and upped my pop to 125,000. more for the shade then yield. i had 30in rows. wish i had a 15in IH drill with planter units on it.

THANX EVERYONE .. while you guys were writing all these encouraging thoughts , I got busy with the little 430 and 400 cyclo and planted about 35,000 more to the acre into 1/3 of the field ,that i had not cranked the population up , GOT TO THINKING OUT THERE IN THE FIELD and realized error in my math ,,. so , .. Just did a recheck of math Tonite ,, one of the seed varieties was given a value of 60,000, when actually it should had been valued at 600,000.. after recalculating I am reasonably satisfied that 2/3 rds of the field has been seeded originally at near 160 thousand , with 90 % germination , i should have around 145 thousand plants to the acre ,, I feel secure that the entire field is within 10 percent..OVER 5 MILLION WERE PLANTED . ...Hay Buster (vermeerjuk , butno one else makes anything better ) is the durndest thing to get set right , The hale of it is You don't know what you have planted until You are Done !!!..

We go with 150k/acre with a planter so we get pretty close to that actual stand. That is why we went back to a planter in the mid-90s. We were running two 750 no-till drills and population and stand were never consistent enough for the expensive seed coming along. It wasnt too bad when you used to plant public varieties and could save seed each year. We are on our second Deere 15in split-row planter. Nothing will plant corn and beans more accurately and you only have one machine for all of it. In addition to the 12/23 row Deere we also have a Kinze 6/11 that is similar. It does a pretty good job but won"t plant as fast, in as hard a ground conditions, and it isn"t central fill. The split-row planter, no matter what the brand is the way to go. You get a much better stand and you know your population all the time, no matter what the seed size is, you just watch the monitor count them off for you. A good Kinze like we have sells for about 15 to 20k. The only thing ours gets used for is planting over corn now since we reduced acres about 5 years ago, but it is very handy for that, would only be better if it was integral and not drawn. Long post for an opinion, but long story short, drills are for small grains, a planter is the stuff for accurate planting.