2026 Planting Season Update and Considerations

By Dusty Sonnenberg, CCA, Field Leader, a project of the Ohio Soybean Council and Soybean Checkoff

2026 has caused Ohio to be a divided state. The southern portions enjoyed a normal-to-slightly-early planting season, with good soil conditions and initially favorable weather. The central part of the state, between Routes 40 and 30, is a mix of early and later planting, with some areas fit and very similar to the neighbors to the south. Other areas in the middle of the state are more like the northern part of Ohio. Much of northern Ohio has struggled to string together enough consecutive dry days to accomplish timely field work. Little by little, more planting progress has been made in the north.

Those who planted early in some areas struggled with late frost and freeze conditions, which damaged plant stands. The rain this past weekend flooded some fields in parts of southwest Ohio, while it prolonged the saturated soil conditions in many others. Farmers are hoping that a dry forecast for the final week of May will allow fields to be fit in early June, allowing field operations to resume.

Growing Degree Units (GDU’s) are a measure of heat accumulation to predict plant growth and development. They are calculated using daily temperature data. The formula for GDUs is: GDU = (Max Temp + Min Temp)/2 – Base Temp. The base temperature is typically 50 degrees. Using a Modified Growing Degree Day Method, there are also caps on the maximum and minimum temperatures, of 50 and 86 degrees, respectively.

Different crops have specific GDU requirements for maturity. Accumulated GDU’s can also provide information about insect emergence and life stages.

There are several online resources from Ohio State and other agricultural companies that calculate and track GDU’s based on zip code.

https://weather.cfaes.osu.edu/gdd

https://www.pioneer.com/us/tools-services/growing-degree-unit.html

Across the state, 2026 has had a greater accumulation of GDU’s to date than either of the last two years, and significantly greater than what would be considered normal.

Plant stand evaluations are an important management activity at this time of the year. In some fields, there are stand issues due to uneven emergence, and in other cases, frost or freeze damage has reduced plant populations. Along with the stand counts is the assessment of stand uniformity. The Ohio Soybean Council funded a project proposed by Dr. Sami Khanal and a team of engineers and researchers to develop and test a digital tool to assist with this task. The Field Vision AI app is the result, which is a web application that is free and open to use.

“Field Vision AI will use pictures you take, or aerial images from a drone, and can give you the stand count,” said Dr. Taylor Dill, Ohio Soybean Council Director of Research. “It will calculate the stand count within the picture and then the per-acre average that you have. It will also give a measure of uniformity. Our overall stand goal, to make sure that we are optimizing yield, is to have at least 100,000 plants per acre. In some research we have seen that lower counts than that can still optimize yield, but then you can run into weed issues where you may have delayed canopy closure. It is important to have a good stand.

The app is currently a free web application available to farmers and can be found at https://fieldvision-app-d3b82e6fec5d.herokuapp.com/.

“Being able to make a replant decision as quickly as you can is important, because the longer you delay planting, you reduce the yield potential,” said Dr. Dill. “If you do need to replant, you want to do that as fast as you can. This can be a tool that helps make that decision easier.”