Even with slowdowns due to rains, some of them heavy, Indiana as a whole is ahead of schedule for both corn and soybean harvest, and “that is certainly true in central Indiana where harvest pace is above average,” says DEKALB and Asgrow technical agronomist Kirsten Thomas-Garriott. “People are finishing up or done with soybeans. We have a few people starting to finish up corn and certainly people are making great in corn, and overall considering the year, yields have been well above expected. We’re set up to have a great crop.”
Even though ahead of schedule, harvest season is now into a tricky time of year to get finished, and Thomas-Garriott does have some concerns about the corn crop standing long enough.
“From about the middle of October onward things just every year tend to go downhill, but particularly with the dry finish we had this year, a lot of those stalks are getting pretty hollow and pretty weak. So, we definitely want to prioritize getting it out. Overall the fields that I’m most worried about will probably already be harvested, but we’re still seeing some fields that were April or very early May planted that went through that went through that cool, wet spell. That makes it more susceptible to pathogens, so we’ve seen some anthracnose stalk rot, some fusarium crown rot, which really exacerbates that standability problem.”
The forecast for dry conditions looks good, but some fields have recently become waterlogged.
“I’m hoping with the dry conditions that we had early on we will absorb some of this water,” Thomas-Garriott said, “but the further we get into the season the less good, drying days we will have and the more that water will tend to kind of sit especially with some of these larger rain events. So I would rather just say when you can get in, get in.”
She adds this is the time of year where the best practice is to get the corn out as quickly as possible.