Crop Update

Someone has said that an average is just made up of extremes. The temperatures and growing degree units (GDD) in the first half and the last half of June are examples. The average accumulation of GDD’s for the first half of June was 16 per day while the last half averaged 24.7. Compared to last year, the GDD’s accumulated through June 2009 are 31 ahead of last year, about what has been accumulated on one of the hot days the 3rd week of June.

Corn

A 111 day hybrid planted April 23 is at V-14 with 6 leaves to emerge before the tassel is fully emerged. Tassels will start to be visible before the last couple of leaves are fully emerged, which could happen in the first full week of July. However, most of the corn at NWRC was planted May 5-7, and those plants are a couple of leaves behind, pushing tasseling to the middle of July.

June 16 saw winds of 60+ mph roar through early in the morning. With that wind is the fear that corn will greensnap, break off at the ground, especially the taller corn which catches more wind and may be growing very fast. However, it wasn’t the earliest planted corn (V9) that had the most plants lost to greensnap, but those planted the first week of May which were at V7. Additionally, the amount of greensnap in a field was related to hybrid and tillage. For example, one hybrid planted April 23 has some plants blown over, but not many broken off at the ground with greensnap. The same hybrid planted May 6 had considerably more plants lost to greensnap. This same field had an average of 15% of the plants broken off in no-till plots while more than 50% were greensnapped in the conventional tilled plots. Some individual rows on the tilled plots had 80% of the plants greensnapped. A couple of factors may have contributed to more greensnap in the tilled soil compared to no-till. The corn in the tilled soil was taller than in the no-till, catching more wind, and may have been more brittle because it had started rapid growth earlier than the no-till. Other hybrids planted the same day varied greatly the number of plants lost to greensnap. The best hybrids had less than 5% of the plants greensnapped.

Regrowth is occurring from the stumps of the greensnapped plants. The regenerating plants have 2 to 3 leaves with collars and are ~15" tall, compared to plants that didn’t break off that are at V11 and are 37" tall. It will be interesting to see if these regrowing plants make any grain. If not, they will at least help shade out weeds.