It’s a Good Time to Scout and Plan Fungicide Application

There may just be a better crop in those fields than we thought at various points of this growing season. But, there are some concerns and David Cosgray says the best way to know what you have is walk the fields.

“Scouting, especially with tar spot, is more important now than it has been,” he explained. “Gray leaf spot and northern corn leaf blight can be devastating, but tar spot can be worse easily and much quicker. The life cycle is so much faster for tar spot than northern and gray, so scouting is paramount. Get out and scout your fields. See what disease pressures are in your corn and soybeans, and definitely on the corn side, pull ears. Husk them back and get your magnifying glass out if you have to. Count the kernels on those early developing ears and look at the potential because I think a lot of people are surprised at what’s out there.”

Cosgray is a central Indiana technical agronomist for DEKALB/Asgrow. With an uptick in both rain events and humidity, that disease pressure is on the increase too. So Cosgray is very pro-fungicide application right now.

“There’s a lot of good fungicide products on the market,” he said. “We want to try to get two or three modes of action out there if we can. Beans, depending on when they were planted, R2 or R3, so they’re approaching that perfect stage where we want to spray these beans. With the corn crop, the common theme is a lot of unevenness, so I urge you to hold off until full tassel. If you can’t hold off to a full tassel, make sure that we’re not putting any agitants with our fungicide, just spray fungicide and water. That way we don’t have any risk for arrested ear in the corn, but you know VT to brown silk, there’s going to be a lot of people wait to brown silk this year I think on corn. Try to extend that protection window into the grain fill period a little bit further.”

Cosgray says try to protect your top-end yield, especially since crops have made in some cases a “shocking” improvement from just two weeks ago due to some much-needed rains.

Hear the full HAT interview with David Cosgray from DEKALB/Asgrow: