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Dodge County, WI | Also in this past dry year, we tried 30" bean rows, since we have an interplant 1200 planter. So both passes made the same day with the same planter. We planted 160k in the 30's and 175k in the 15's. The variety was Renk 241 RR beans. Planted on May 23.
NOTE: Something to laugh about, I made a mistake setting up the Work Condition on the monitor when we switched from 15"-30", and the PRO600 thought it had 48 cell plates in the meters, instead of the 188cell plates (or whatever the bean disks are) it ACTUALLY had. Planter tried to put 160k population down with the 48 cell setting, and ended up with over 300k population in 30" rows. The beans were pretty much on top of each other, LOL. For fun I included that pass on here.
In order that yield trial went:
15" RK241---43bu. No Sprayer tracks
15" RK241---42bu. Sprayer tracks
30" RK241---44bu. Never gonna have sprayer tracks here, obviously.
30" RK241---42bu. Population 300k+ (not bad!)
I was surprised at this result, I thought there would be a 1-2 bu advantage to the 15" rows, at least for the "no sprayer tracks" 15" rows. I liked being able to plant using the trash wheels and the seedbed was better than the 15's. It is also important to note that by this time last year the ground was getting very hard and dry. It seemed that at this point the row units were good at cutting trash, and good at penetrating the ground, but not so good at doing both at the same time. We were going slower than normal to compensate for this, like 4-4.5mph. With the 30" rows, we could lower the trashwheels, and the row units always stayed in the ground.
We will try this again this year. With a result like this, I look forward to seeing next year's trial. I wouldn't mind having a regular planter instead of the interplant. It is our only planter for corn and beans. But this result flies in the face of many studies, so nobody is making any decisions yet. Except that 300,000 seeds/acre is NOT necessary.
Ben | |
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30" vs 15" our own yield trial
