Soybean School: Ideal Planting Dates & When, If Ever, To Swap out Varieties

The 2014 planting season isn’t exactly kicking off with a bang. A hard winter, a slow spring and continued rain has been hard on winter wheat fields and has got planting off to a very slow start.

While soybeans aren’t the first priority to get in the ground (they do require warm soil, after all), there is an ideal window to get them in the ground without giving up yield potential. It’s not late yet, but if the end of May arrives and you still haven’t got to your soybean fields should you swap out to a shorter season bean? If it’s early June, should your planting depth or population change?

In this edition of the Soybean School, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food soybean specialist Horst Bohner sits down with Bernard Tobin to talk about ideal planting dates for soybeans, why shallow is better in the early part of the year and when, if ever, to swap out to a shorter-season bean. What’s more, Horst will cover how late planting impacts plant height and yield potential and what the best population rate is, based on time of year. All that and more in the video below.


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