corn planting depth

Last week, I attended a crop information meeting. One of the speakers said that new research coming out of the Midwest universities is showing a yield advantage to planting corn 3" deep as opposed to the traditional 2" depth. He claimed it results in more even emergence due to less temperature and moisture variation. While the deeper planted corn takes several days longer to emerge, more of it comes through the ground within 12 hours of its neighboring plants. If any of you have heard Randy Dowdy of Georgia speak about growing 500 bushel corn, you know that he firmly believes that is critical. There was a demonstration plot where the speaker was talking. They had marked emerged plants every 12 hours with different colored flags over a 4 day period in the spring and graphed it showing the more concentrated emergence of the deeper planted corn. The ears on the deeper planted corn appeared to be more uniform than the shallower planted plot. A lot of growers in the audience were pretty concerned that the deeper planting would be a disaster if a cold, wet spell followed planting. Have any of you heard of this research, or better yet, tried the deeper planting? If I remember correctly, the research he quoted was done in Illinois and Missouri. I found it a very interesting presentation.

3" deep is something I would never consider with any soil that has any degree of clay content so I am out on that. Got to have heat units and sunlight in my mind to make a run at 500 bushels per acre. The season in the Finger Lakes Region here is too short to make that a realistic goal until plant genetics modify which I would guess would take around 20 years. Why would we want 500 bushel corn anyways? We are gradually losing foreign market to foreign producers. In the US we are seeing trend shifts in milk consumption and meat consumption may be affected over the next few decades due to shifting consumer desires. The price per bushel will trend down and the producers that can't very well keep up with that productivity will get kicked to the curb. Once they think about it I can't imagine that agribusiness will get behind this once they think about the safety in numbers concept.

This fellow from Georgia needs to come up to Iowa in April and try that 3 inch depth with his own money paying the bills. LOL The only place this MIGHT work is the southern sates where you have the heat to bring it up quickly. Here in North-East Iowa you have to have corn come up with temperatures that are barely above the minimum they say corn will sprout at. Because there are many times you will get cold spells that would rot corn planted that deep up here. I have had snow accumulate on emerged corn several times in my life time.

Guys getting paid to talk about high yields all have things they push that makes them the "EXPERT" on growing high yield corn. I tend to listen to fellows that have a record of high yields over thousands of acres for decades of time. There are ideas that these fellows have that are good to think about and adapt to your operation. Just realize most of these HIGH yield "champs" are doing this on small fields " fifty acres or less" and may use practices that would never be practical on large commercial operations. An example is a one fellow applied his fertilizer in six different applications timed over the corn plants life cycle. Try that on thousands of acres!!!

only thing better then 3in is 3.5in deep; i was very skeptical but tried it and now it all goes in DEEP! i'm not putting u guys down but don't knock it till u try it!

I think we buried it that deep a few years ago when it was super dry, corn did great, we try to bury deep enough to get moisture for germination.

Around me you would be planting either below the water table or in frost about half the time if you did that. There have been plenty of southern farmers that have come here and tried to show us how to farm, I don't know of any that stayed.

JD,
Back in the 50's dad would use a cultivator. It would throw dirt around the corn stalk to cover up weeds. We would cultivate 2-3 times. So each time we cultivated, the roots became deeper.

Not really sure cultivating improved yield, especially if I didn't pay attention, the cultivator would take out some corn.

I only planted it about 6 times for a test place to run one of my combines but here in dryland country I always planted it that deep, if you don't it will not make it here as I live in a high desert, I found many years ago to plant alfalfa and grass seed that deep also and I can plant it in April as it will not sprout until the ground warms up enough, if you try planting it 1/4-1/2" deep at that time of year here it sprouts and the freezing kills it all, you guys who get all the H20 you could ever need have it made lol

David Hula of Charles City Virginia holds the World's Record on corn yield per acre maybe some of you Midwestern fellows need to come East to see how its done(LOL)

My sister's husband insisted on planting deep to get brace roots below ground to prevent lodging. I never heard of this before. Perhaps old stuff to many corn farmers

I have planted that deep just to get into some moisture but I am on sand and the 1" or 2" on top will be dust if it has not rained for a week. In decent ground it would not be that dry unless it did not rain for a month. This is also in May not in April when everybody has to start.

I'm just a little guy that plants a few acers. I have been reading up some on seeding depth. I went a little deeper this year, 2 1/2 inches. It took a day or two longer to come up but other than that it seems to be doing good. My BTO friend says you got to get the seed down to where ever the moisture is when he's doing his later planting as things dry out in the spring.

Keeping in mind that I have grown corn exactly 4 years, I can tell you what I think. Growing corn is like a chess game you play with God. There are general rules, and you have to follow them, but you also have to pay very close attention to the current and expected conditions in your area. Even a county away can make a difference so advice needs to be listened to but evaluated in terms of YOUR fields. I remember talking to Tom O'Connor the second year I planted and hearing him tell me that you had to put the seed down where the moisture was. Excellent advice! A bad drought after planting that year left me with about 40% viable plants above ground and the rest either died after sprouting or never showed. After that I increased my depth and the results were dramatic in terms of population. This year I blundered along at the same depth but it was very wet...not so good a result. Should have dealt with that! People who plant a handful of seed think corn is easy to grow. Reality is, it is not. Needs a lot of nutrients and correct planting and no competition from weeds. After 4 years I am just getting a handle on planting and weed control. I still get mixed grades on the nutrients. It is very challenging especially when you throw older equipment into the mix. Can't wait to try soys....

That is really nothing new. Minimum on corn depth has been 2 to 2.5 for years. When I was a kid Dad said plant corn 3 to 4 inches deep and when planting soybeans if you did not see a few on top when you made a round you were planting to deep.

The planters I have had would not even plant that deep. 2.5" was below what would ever come up. Must be a modification to corn plant to make it able to be planted like that as the seed when I was still farming would never make it here. Normal was 2" and for in dry year you might go to 2.5" but I never changed depth on planter from the 2" for either corn or beans. But if we got a bit of rain after planting unless the soil stayed wet plants could never break through the crust that developed. Always had to use a rotary how, sometimes multi passes to get the plants out.

I found this topic of discussion to be rather intriguing. I would be very interested to find out what universities are researching and talking about this. I live and farm in southern Minnesota. I have been actively farming the family farm since 2006, while having some decision making roles on this farm since 1991. I grew up on that farm and have had a passion about its success and ability to raise crops. I have been involved in the agronomic decisions since 1991 and the selection of corn hybrids and soybean varieties since around 1997. I went to the U of M for agricultural business and applied economics, finishing there in 1989. I went in to the agronomy field in 1990 and obtained my certification for crop advising in 1996. As I think back to all the training, the workshops, and the continuing education sessions, the 1.5 to 2.0 inch planting depth has been the generally accepted norm in our country. I tend to err towards the 2 inch planting depth with my own corn production. I have diagnosed a fair number of "issues" in the field during early growth, when the seedlings showed some sort of problems, accompanied by too shallow of a planting depth. I have been "tweaking" various parts of my corn production since I started in the agronomy field in 1991, simply trying to slowly and decisively increase yield. I have experienced crusting challenges after planting. I am questioning some of the practices we have accepted and embraced in more recent times, simply because of what I see in the field in both corn and soybean production. Once again, we had a challenging spring to try and plant our crops into this past May and June, as April was totally out of the question. I am not necessarily questioning or challenging the points raised, Leroy. I would ask for you to share the sources of your information, as I would like to find out more for myself and even ask some of the agronomy staff at the U of M, when the time arrives. I just think we would have some serious issues in our part of the country, especially under difficult early season conditions, like we have seen the past two years.

That was just from my experiance dating back into the 1950's. Just a few days from the 75 mark. First planter I was around was a modified horse planter that was told Great Grandpa bought in 1906. Newest a JohnDeere 494A. And the name of my township is Clay. And was told the brick house Mom was raised in the clay was doug in field in front of house and fired right on the farm.