Already this growing season, it has been a tale of two opposites for some farmers, including many in southwest Indiana. Agronomist Matt Parmer says many soybean growers got off to a very fast start in the month of April.
“We got more beans planted this year in the month of April than we probably ever have,” he said, “and last year we never got a chance to plant any beans in April. So, this was a really big opportunity for us.”
But corn planting and early development has been anything but fast, most specifically with no till corn.
“I can’t say that I’ve seen any perfect stands out there, and we certainly had a lot of corn that did not emerge uniformly at all. But despite that, because we were getting so few heat units, even corn that had emerged well over 48 hours difference from their neighbors, they’re actually all in the same stage. So the corn that’s up is pretty fairly uniform.”
Parmer said the lack of heat and even moisture had emerged corn look nearly translucent, to an ugly, pale yellow color. But as it heated up in the last week the plants are green again and he expects the crop to take off.
Saturated soils are more common this week, so Parmer will monitor whether crown rot will be an issue. The disease he is most concerned about “if we stay saturated is going to be Physoderma and spraying in that early time frame, especially being proactive on that disease, it will be a disease we’ll be on the watch for. One thing we found out is if we wait until that tassel time it’s just too late for Physoderma.”
He added there were some isolated areas where beans were lost to the freeze earlier this month, and some replant because of heavy rains will be necessary in spots.
“Most of southwest Indiana over the weekend got nailed with anywhere from 2 to 3 plus inches, pretty widespread,” he told HAT. “So rivers are coming up and we’re going to lose a few beans to that, but from the standpoint of soybeans we’re off to a really early start and we’re pretty fortunate to have so many beans in the ground.”
Matt Parmer is with DEKALB/Asgrow.