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WC MN | Emergence trumps spacing every day in my opinion. Of course, doubles and skips hurt yield but poor emergence can break you.
If you have the occasional skip, I don't think it hurts all that bad because most of the time the plants next to it can make up for some of the yield. Personally, I think doubles hurt alot more than a skip. Now you have two plants drawing moisture and producing an unharvestable ear.
I had one field this year with a lot of skips due to crusting. Final population was 26k and I dropped 32k. It was my 3rd best field. Granted it was dry but I don't think the skips hurt all that bad.
I've seen guys with a poor planter throw triples and some quadruples then have a foot and a half gap. That is probably the worse scenario.
I would still strive to plant even spacing you can but focus more energy on getting depth and other variables right for proper emergence. Some guys never check the depth of each row!
Rule of thumb I heard was you want most of the corn to come up within 48 hours of each other. Here, that doesn't happen. The low areas are always colder and take longer to pop, sometimes up to a week. But within the row or the plant nearest the 48 hour rule should still apply. | |
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corn plant spacing
