Recent rains across the South Plains have farmers scrambling to finish planting their dryland cotton and begin planting dryland grain sorghum. Farmers should use available soil moisture as a guide for selecting a grain sorghum seeding rate.
Many producers often plant too much grain sorghum seed per acre.
If drought conditions follow, there may be inadequate moisture available per plant during flowering and grain-fill to produce grain. For this reason, producers should pay close attention to seed size by variety when calculating seeding rates, the agronomist said. It's crucial to know your variety's seed per pound rating with most varieties this is typically about 13,000 to 16,000 seeds per pound. So, seeding a modest plant population is agronomically and economically less risky than seeding a higher plant population under droughty conditions. When soil moisture is adequate, most South Plains producers can set their planters to drop 30,000 to 35,000 seeds per acre to achieve a modest plant population.