soybeans plates

How well do plates work at planting soy beans today? how do you figure out what plates you need for beans? We're beans graded like corn was when plate planters were used?

Soybeans were never sorted for size until recent years usually just small or large seed sometimes medium seed, back when plates were popular, just one plate you changed sprockets to change the speed it turns to change population of seed planted

when i used jd 7000 plate planter, it was a early model. i had one set that had more of a square slot and i used that one, i still have the plates can look at the number if you want. it did fine but now using a no-till drill but thinking about getting a planter again for beans set up on 15" rows.

Beans are not so fussy like corn, they compensate for different populations. So we tend to scatter the seed and all is fine.

Of late with the high priced traited bean seed we are trying to cut planting rates and need to get a little better seed placement at lower populations.

Anyhow, bean seed is not sorted for size, but is generally rated for number of seeds per lb. big seed or small seed, we end up with small seed in drier years or certain growing conditions. What do we get, 2200 to 2800 per lb is common sizes?

Your planter will be rated for number of lbs of seed planted per acre with the bean plates, and there are charts on your seed bag, at your seed dealer, online, maybe in your planter manual, that line up different lbs per acre with different seeds per lb to come up with aproximate seeds per acre planted. You need about at least 100,000 to have a good harvest, so need to plant 140,000 to 200,000 to make up for less than perfect plant spacing, poor plants, bad seed, damage from driving on some and hail and so forth.

We have tried to make corn planting an exact science, with 20-20 monitors and very fancy sensors and controls to put exactly 34,000 (or whatever your soil fertility and moisture will support) corn seeds per acre all spaced exactly the same depth and exactly the same distance apart in the row. Because corn is kinda fussy about that sort of thing. Come fall the perfect planting will give better yields, the close spaced corn plants will suffer a bit, the later to emerge plants will have nubbins from the couple days of shading, the long gaps between missed seedlings will yield less because the neighboring corn plants can't adjust to make up much more yield. Man corn is fussy, it figures out how many kernels it will set in early summer based on all this and can't get any better only worse through mid and late summer.

We still slop out 140,000 to 220,000 bean seeds per acre, any old spacing, a range of depths,and come August any of that will work out well depending on the weather we get in August, not at all depending on how well we planted the seed. Beans don't care, they spend all summer branching out to fill in the gaps and be a nice full plant, and then in August it starts worrying about its seed production, how many blossoms to keep, how big to make the seeds. They didn't worry about their neighbors, or shading, or any of that.

More than you wanted to know!

Paul

Hey Paul I always wanta know more! Haha thanks for the info

What type of planter do you have?Mines a 7100 jd and use kinze brush meters.My old IH planter I used 60 cell oval holes plates.