Replanting Peanuts?

We are getting very close to finishing planting peanuts. We are still planting some this week. The last few weeks, we have been monitoring thrips very closely. We have also been spraying our cracking herbicide sprays. Here is a twin row field  of 06G planted at 7 seed per foot, and having a tough time getting a stand. There is plenty of moisture here and some seeds have rotted in the ground. We are good at 2 inch depth. In some spots we are a little deep. Plants have a hard time getting up from below 3″ for sure.

We’re getting 3.5 to 4 plants per row foot here and there are some skips. Do we need to worry about replant? UGA Peanut Agronomist Dr. Scott Monfort says if we are at 2.5 plants per foot, and no skips, we are okay. The only skips in this field are on one side of the twin. This we are not worried about since we can compensate from the other side.

Here is some more information from UGA Agronomist Dr. Scott Tubbs who put together some multi-year research on replant peanuts:

Replanting did not improve yield over leaving a poor plant stand as often as I would have anticipated. Overall, only when plant stands were as low as 1 plant per foot of row did replanting improve yield at a point that it would be economically viable to justify the cost of replanting (because of the additional cost of seed and fuel/labor/equipment expenses to move across the field again).  Although, some of the individual year data did show the potential for yield improvement when plant stands were 2 plants per foot of row or less.  Hence, if plant stands are at least 2.5 plants per foot of row (whether twin row or single row; strip-till or conventional tillage; and the stands are relatively uniform without large gaps in the field), the chances of gaining a return on the investment of replanting a field is very low. 

The method of replanting the field does matter as well – there were essentially no circumstances where burning down the original stand of peanuts with herbicide and starting over with a complete replanting of peanut was worthwhile.  Any instances where replanting showed the potential for a benefit, it was when the poor plant stand was left in the field and peanut was replanted by offsetting the planter a couple inches to the side of the original row and placing supplemental seed in the ground.  Additional experiments are being conducted to determine the effect of less uniform plant stands with varying gap sizes within the row, and also the timing of determining optimum maturity when the original plant stand and a replanted plant stand are growing together in the field. 

One thing that was clear in our data was that if a replant decision was made, that decision needed to occur within 2-3 weeks after the original planting date. Waiting until 4 weeks after the original planting was unsuccessful in gaining an advantage over leaving the original plant stand alone.