It has been a stressful planting season for producers; but, now that the crop has been planted, reducing stress on the crops will be needed. Planting and replanting has been top priority this week. Now it is time to focus on early crop development, says Eric Miller, with DuPont Pioneer. He recommends scouting fields to check on early plant health, “It will be important to monitor the root profile. I have dug up several corn plants where the roots went sideways trying to find oxygen and avoid the water saturated soil.” He added that it will be important to monitor root development which will impact uptake of nitrogen.
Another issue growers will need to keep a close eye on is weed control. “With many of our fields having much less population than normal, weed control could be an issue in some of these thin stands,” said Miller in this week’s DuPont Pioneer Agronomy Report.
Right now we have crops in varying stages of development because of the wide planting dates we had. Miller feels that over the next few weeks the later planted crops will catch up, “The cold and wet weather did slow down development of the April planted corn. Some of those seeds just sat there for a while.” He does expect the later planted corn to catch up, “And I do not expect to see a big difference between the crops in the two different planting windows by the time we get to July.” He said the key to how well the crop responds will determine how much stress is put on the crop, “This crop has been through a lot of stress already. We need to minimize any additional stress before pollination.”
Listen to the complete DuPont Pioneer agronomy report under the agronomy tab.