Farming Video | Skip Row Corn Trial: 36K vs. 48K with Chad Henderson

2 Jul 252m 30s

In this hands-on field trial, Chad Henderson of XtremeAg compares 36,000 vs. 48,000 corn plants per acre in a skip row corn setup. He breaks down the results so far—bigger stalks, better root systems, and ear development on the lower population side. Chad shares what’s working, what still needs proving, and whether skip row corn is a fit for his farm in the Southeast. It’s a practical look at corn population strategy with real-world visuals and commentary.

00:00:00 Hey y'all, this is Chad Henderson with Extreme Ag and Extreme Ag, kind of what we're doing here today. You know, um, we've been dabbling in this skip row corn 00:00:08 for a couple years now and it's nothing that I can see our farm just taking off and running whole hog with, 00:00:14 but it is something that lets us look at the plant and look at how the plant does. This side over here, if you look at it, it's 36,000 plants 00:00:21 and it's got two ears shoving on it. It'll be yet to say whether we can hold those ears. I think a lot of that's environmental. 00:00:27 A lot of that's fertility, so we'll see. But the stalk diameter is massive compared to this other side, which is 48,000 plants. 00:00:35 And to feel like we can do what we needed to do, we would need those 48, 50,000 plants, I feel like, to get where we wanted to be. 00:00:43 Now, a lot of people already been doing this out west, you know, there's a lot of PE farms that's been on this wagon for conserving moisture and, 00:00:51 and uh, and, and it works for them. But I'm just wondering, is it gonna work in our area? It's really where we at. So 00:00:56 let's just take a little better look. Okay, so this is 48,000. This is probably a little, it looks like it may be a little 00:01:02 lower, 48,000. We look, can see the tightness of them here, but, um, you see us trying to put this one on, 00:01:08 I don't think we're even close to making this one myself. You know, it would be a, a way far stretch to make that. 00:01:13 Uh, but we do have good plant health. You can see the color and the leaves and we'll look here too. 00:01:18 Also wanna look at the stalk diameter on it. As you see, they're stacked in here pretty tight. And this stalk diameter is, you know, fairly small and that, 00:01:26 and that locks the root root system down to being fairly small as well. So that's part of what we're seeing here at 48,000. 00:01:34 Now let's look at the other side here. So this is the root structure and leaves at 36,000. So you can see that, man, we have a much more robust plant. 00:01:45 We have a lot better root system. We can tell that from looking up above it here. And then the ear on it is much better 00:01:52 and the second ear is much further along. So we have a chance to hold this one. Now, ear counts, ear count is kernels or kernels. 00:02:01 Weight is weight. So which one will make more and will it even make more than the rows beside it that are standard plants is yet to be seen. 00:02:11 We did accomplish one thing. We accomplished a good clean middle down through here. Um, we accomplished the, the weed control 00:02:17 because that was really wondering what, what it was gonna happen when we got the sunlight in. 00:02:22.315 --> 00:02:25.215