Delayed planting common across Corn Belt

IVESDALE, Ill. — A wet spring and a long planting season was a common theme among agronomists representing a large chunk of the western Corn Belt at the AgriGold Specialty Crops Conference on June 18.

Panelists were Kevin Gale, northern Illinois; Nick Frederking, southern Illinois; Emily Prevo, southern Iowa; and Sam McCord, Nebraska. Chuck Hill, specialty products manager, served as moderator.

Let’s open with a rundown of the planting season. How has it been going?

McCord: We’ve had one of the wettest springs we’ve had in probably 20-plus years, so planting got spread out a really long window.

We started planting in mid-April for the most part and some didn’t get done until June. The challenge was it would dry out a little bit, then guys would plant some more and then it would rain.

There’s pockets in Nebraska where they’re 200% to 300% above their typical rainfall for this time of year. Those areas are really struggling, obviously, with the saturation. We’re seeing that in the corn with uneven emergence, nitrogen deficiency, things like that.

Overall, Nebraska is in pretty good shape. The southern tier of Nebraska looks probably the best from what I’ve looked at for the most part.

Central and northeast Nebraska are where those wet pockets were, and that’s where I’m seeing more challenges.

Luckily, we’ve gotten a lot of heat the last two weeks and the corn has really taken off. Things are starting to look better.

With those challenging conditions, there were acres that got planted wet. So, sidewall compaction is a big concern.

Luckily, we didn’t get real hot and dry right away after those fields got planted. The moisture really benefited the corn to get the roots down, get below that compaction and take off.

It wasn’t exactly the start we wanted, but we’re going to manage it the best we can and keep going from there.

Prevo: We experienced a lot of the same conditions that Nebraska did. A lot of corn got planted in really nice conditions around April 16, then the next three weeks we had some cool rains and there was very uneven emergence in a lot of place. It’s starting to catch up now, but I think those sins of planting will come back to haunt us.

With that being said, there’s a lot of corn sitting in the ground under varied conditions in some corn that we rushed.

The mid-May planted corn looks really good right now, and it’s really starting to root, take off and go. There’s just a lot of variability.

Gale: This year has been a mixed bag overall. We had the extended planting season, as well. It started in the middle of April and went to the middle of June, basically two months of planting. The crops actually look pretty darn good in my area. So, we’re pretty fortunate.

In looking at planting progress, we have a very small percentage that got done in April. By May 12, we were about 42% planted on corn. A year ago, 80% of our corn was planted. We’re behind where we were a year ago.

But that mid-May corn was fairly good. We didn’t have a pounding rain event. Rainfall has a lot to do with it this year, but also soil type.

In more clay type of soil, we had more issues with emergence, especially in those areas where we had heavy rain. So, compaction is an issue.

We’re obviously seeing a little bit of those sins from planting that have showed up in the last week or two. There’s a little yellowing in some areas and that could be tied to no-till conditions, small root development.

We don’t have enough root system to pick up the nutrients we need. Nitrogen is going to be a concern, too, where we got the most rainfall.

A lot of my area didn’t get excessive rain. We had some heavy rain events in pockets, but not overly abundant.

I don’t think nitrogen will be that big of an issue for me personally, but some areas such as Champaign County and farther south where there was a lot of heavy rains, that could be an issue.

Frederking: We were very wet in southern Illinois. But before I get to the planting part, I think it’s important to understand where we came from.

Going through January, February, March, we were super dry. Soil moisture declined, dropping fast. Guys were starting to put anhydrous on in March. They were thinking about it in February, but that just sounded crazy.

Then April 10 hit and it just unleashed. We had two big planting windows in my opinion, somewhere around the beginning of April and then again at the very end of May.

Make no mistake, there was planting sprinkled in there, but it was dependent on where the rain hit and where it didn’t hit.

As planting started, guys were waiting for that perfect window. We’ve been kind of bit the past couple of years with planting into cool soils.

“Inhibitional chilling” is a new buzz word in ag. We faced that, and guys didn’t want to deal with that. They didn’t want to deal with replants. They kept waiting for perfection — and that never came.

One of the best questions I’ve received this year as an agronomist is, ‘You guys tell us how to do things right all the time. Tell me how to do good in a bad situation.’ That was the best question I ever got.

There’s a lot of things we change as we went through the spring — turn down the down-pressure on the planter, so we’re not making as much sidewall compaction. Let’s make tillage shallower.

Make no mistake, though, you can do all of that if you want, there’s still compaction as a hardpan, there’s still sidewall compaction from the planter.

In my opinion, a few blessings in disguise, as we made sidewall compaction early, stuff did stay wet. The one thing I noticed is that heavy nodal roots did develop and push through those sidewalls.

I don’t anticipate that being as big of an issue this year, unless you planted at the end of May. The ground is as hard as rock, but the early stuff pushed through and should have made those channels for root development.

Some of the other things I’ve noticed this year outside of all the replant are small infections happening in the mesocotyl of the young corn plants, soybean root diseases suddenly showing up, but there is a lot of latent infection I believe in the corn crop that may show itself at the end of the season.

Things like gray leaf spot, which I wouldn’t to see until canopy happens, is showing up in very small corn already. That’s an indicator of how wet we’ve been.

At what point is the heat detrimental to corn?

Prevo: When we talk about the sins of planting, right of the gate we need that root system to really get down to be able to thrive.

With that heat, it’s allowed the roots to get down, but heat could also be a detriment if we don’t have a good root system already if there was sidewall compaction.

You’re going to see a lot of things physiologically develop within that corn plant, whether that’s length and girth, and all of that is really before the V6 time frame. That is where we can see some extra added stress in that plant become a negative thing.

Gale: In the crop condition report from June 10 to June 17, Illinois dropped from 74% of corn in the good to excellent range down to 65%. Is that a big deal? Probably not.

You remember last year, we were extremely dry. We were hot. The corn was rolling. Plants were stuck there and not growing.

I would say by the end of June last year we were about 25% good to excellent. Did that translate to yield? Illinois averaged 206 bushels an acre last year. So, the crop conditions report doesn’t mean much in June.

Even if we have a little bit of stress, it’s kind of not that big of a deal in June. It’s more post-tassel I’m worried about with dryness.

These genetics today are so much better than they were years ago. They can just sit there and weather the storm.

Frederking: We had a lot of late-planted corn in southern Illinois. What’s the most detrimental stage? It’s when those nodal roots are starting to develop from the crown in the beginning of the season.

I was amazed over the last week how much we lost in terms of moisture in the top couple inches of soil. When those roots start to develop and there’s no moisture around, they don’t develop.

We need roots season-long. So, the later planted stuff this year, I’m worried about root development in some of these dry conditions.

The nodal roots are there in the stuff that was planted a little earlier, and I expect them to continue to explore as the water table drops.

Do (weekly crop conditions percentage) points matter? No, not so much. Does it effect yield? Maybe not so much. We weren’t this late planted, though, last year, either, at least in my neck of the wood.

Where’s the most detrimental stage? It’s those plants that just emerged in the last two, maybe three weeks, going into V5. In my territory, the majority of the corn is knee-high and below. That’s the time to establish roots.

If there’s no moisture present, those roots are not going to develop and you start hearing things like rootless corn syndrome. That’s if you don’t have sidewall compaction, tomahawk roots and things like that.

McCord: We’re roughly at V4 to V10-plus corn in my area. It’s kind of different from what they talked about with the late-planted corn.

I don’t want stress on corn after V8. That’s the time when the corn really starts to determine its ear, in terms of the length, especially when you’re in irrigated acres.

I don’t want to have stress at any point throughout the growing season, but once we get to that time frame, ultimately at reproduction is when I want that corn to be happy. That way it puts on the most kernels possible, we fill them all and get the best yield possible.