It’s not good in plant into wet soils. That’s the first bit of advice agronomists from the University of Illinois have for farmers in the month of April. It is worse to plant in cold, wet soils. Giovani Preza Fontes says there’s still plenty of time for field conditions to improve.

“We don’t want to plant if the soil is too wet just because, you know, that’s not a good start for the crops. It’s probably going to have a negative impact on emergence and establishment, and you’re not setting yourself up for having a good stand.”

The first rule is to wait for soil conditions to be good for planting. When that happens, farmers should work to get their seeding rates dialed into deliver a plant density that maximizes profitability.

“So, when we look at corn overall, what we found is that – and again, this is looking at the economic optimal plant density right – what we found in our research is that we’re maximizing the highest dollar return to seed when we have population densities of about 34 to 36 plants per acre. For soybeans, we see the maximum return to seed is around 115,000 plants to 120,000 plants per acre.”

Fontes says the seeding rates are conservative numbers related to the economic analysis. They used $4 per bushel for corn. $10 per bushel for soybeans, and a seed cost of fifty cents per thousand seeds.