In northeast Ohio, spring rains delayed small grain forage harvest and corn planting. Most producers adjusted to plant earlier-maturing corn hybrids, and while there will still be a delay in corn harvest, it doesn’t appear that it will be too extreme. As we are still a few weeks from harvest, the weather can still squeeze us for time as we prepare to plant our next forage crop, and you may have questions about when the optimal time is to plant small grains.
We should not be surprised that there is limited research investigating optimal planting dates for fall-seeded small grains. Historically, our planting dates have been dictated by your area’s “fly free” date. Recommendations for wheat have been that fall seedings should be completed within 10 days of your fly-free date. For Wayne County, Ohio, that date is Sept. 26. However, in those years when planting may be delayed, how late is too late?
Work from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Jamie L. Whitten Plant Materials Center in Coffeeville, Mississippi, showed that ideal planting dates for several small grain forages ranged from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. In their work, seeding after the mid-October date resulted in a 1% reduction in forage yield for each day that planting was delayed.
This year, several Ohio State University Extension projects focused on the effects of planting date on small grain forage yield. You will be able to review all of those projects when the 2026 OSU Extension eFields and eBarns reports are published later next month.
I conducted one of the trials at the OSU CFAES Wooster Campus farms this year. The study compared three small grain forages (rye, triticale and barley) planted on five different dates in fall 2025 (Sept 15, Sept 29, Oct 13, Oct 27 and Nov 6). Although this study will be replicated over the next two years, I would like to share the first year’s findings with you.
Fall ground cover is reported in Table 1. It was no surprise that the earliest planting provided the greatest percentage of ground cover by first frost (Nov 19). There was no statistical difference between fall forage mass from the Sept seedings (64% for Sept 15 vs 47% for Sept 29). As planting was delayed to October or later, the percent ground cover was reduced regardless of species planted.
The difference in fall percent ground cover did not directly impact spring forage yield (Table 2). For the 2025/2026 growing season, yield was optimized at the mid-October planting.
Only one variety of each species was used in this study, and we selected the variety that was most frequently purchased by area producers. All plots were harvested in the early boot growth stage. Triticale was the highest-yielding species (2885 lbs/ac), followed by barley (2519 lbs/ac) and rye (2338 lbs/ac). The individual species spring forage yield was affected by planting date (Table 3).
Triticale was consistently the highest yielding at the three earliest planting dates, followed by barley. Triticale and barley had nearly identical yields for the Oct. 13 planting date (3642 lbs/ac vs. 3602 lbs/ac). Rye, on the other hand, outyielded the other species at the two latest planting dates.
Although there were statistically significant results, this is just a summary of one year of data. Based on one year of data, we can conclude that for this part of Ohio, we have some flexibility in planting date. Regardless of when you are able to get your fall crop planted, you should focus on the basic agronomic practices. The Ohio Agronomy Guide recommends that seeding rates be between 1.2 and 1.6 million seeds per acre, planted within 3 weeks of your fly-free date. Other research has identified that a fall application of 25 units of nitrogen will also promote fall tillering and promote spring yield. To review this study and our other planting date studies, check out our yearly eFields and eBarns reports at digitalag.osu.edu.
