Many growers in Cuming, Burt, Dodge, and Washington County had a lot of decisions to make this week on replanting: From weighing yield potential, corn maturity selection, herbicide considerations, and crop insurance deadlines/options. As a result, a regional meeting was hosted on June 10 at Uehling, NE where over 120 people attended and covered by KETV and KMTV stations.
Presentations from the meeting:
Dodge County Farm Service Agency-Crop Disaster Meeting Uehling
Roger Elmore Crop Hail June 2014
Unfortunately, many corn plants did not recover as hoped after the hail storm (Figure 1). Rotting of the corn tissue at or above the growing point occurred in hail-damaged fields across the region even in fields that were at the V4 growth stage when the hail storm occurred.
Figure 1. This V4 growth stage corn plant during the hail event was not able to recover.
The end of the late planting period for corn is June 14 and July 5 for corn and soybeans, respectively. Growers have been instructed to leave 10 ft wide strips the length of the field for the first 20 acres of a field and then another strip for each additional 40 acres for adjustors. Many fields in northeast Dodge County have already been replanted where the surviving corn plant populations ranged from 3,000 to 11,000 per acre and soybean stand of less than 50,000. On the fringes of these obvious replant areas, growers had to decide whether corn stands of 15,000 to 18,000 corn plants/acres and soybean stands less than 75,000 plants/acre were enough to keep as-is. Many growers have decided to keep damaged stands where the decision to replant was not obvious, such as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Dryland corn field on June 10, one week after the storm, with a surviving stand of 17,200 plants/ with a population range from 13,000 to 21,000 that will not be replanted.
Post emergence herbicide applications are being made around the area in corn fields this week as most corn is in the V5-V8 growth stages. Increased weed pressure from waterhemp and morningglories in these hail-damaged corn stands may be an issue that could be managed with tank mixing post emergence residual herbicide products, such as HPPD inhibitors like Callisto/Laudis/Impact.
