About Your Fields May 7, 2018
In This Issue:
1. Ladies and Gentlemen Start Your Engines, Ready, Set, Go!
2. Field View - Black Cutworms are coming are you protected?
3. What's Next
Ladies and Gentlemen Start Your Engines, Ready, Set, Go!
The race has started for the 2018 crop. Wow what a difference a little time makes, when I last put my thoughts on paper we did not know when the planters would start to roll. It has been a couple of weeks and I would say that we have gone from 0 percent planted to close to 75 or 80 percent planted. I have told many people that it has been a long time since I have seen this many acres planted in this short amount of time. Ben was saying the other day that Akron has sprayed more acres year to date than we did last year even though we started about a week or two later this year. When many of you started planting ground temperatures were in the mid to upper 50's, now our ground temps are in the low 70's at 4 inches. A lot of the earlier planted corn is starting to poke up through the ground and a few of the beans. What would happen to seeds planted in cool ground temps? According to an article from Iowa State Corn Emergence Article corn planted in 50 degree soil temperatures could take as much as three weeks to emerge. Fortunately our soils have warmed up and our emergence looks good and even for now. Let's talk about a few of the situations that could effect our crops could encounter the next couple of months. One of the most common problems that we could run into when a lot of the crop is planted in a short amount of time is weed control. When a lot of acres are planted in this short amount of time pre-emrge chemical applications sometimes are unable to be put on before the crop comes up. As we know it is imperative to keep weed competiton in check early in the growing season. Corn plants need to get up to V5 as quickly as they can in order to maximize yield. As I have talked about in some of the Yields Ahead meetings that Akron has put on over the years a corn ear's length and girth are determined by V5, and any stress on the plant could rob yield. What should you do if your corn is emerged without any herbicide down is take a look at your program. Several of the main herbicides that we use have a label to be applied over the top of emerged crop. If you have emerged weeds and you were planning on a chemical program that includes something with Dual, Harness or Outlook and you have grass emerging you will need to add some glyphosate to the mix. All three of these products will stop grasses from germinating, if they are already emerged you will need to just kill it with a little glyphosate. If you have some broadleaf weeds starting to show many of the three chemicals above have premixes for corn that would include an HPPD chemical that would take down the broadleaf weeds. If you have soybeans that are up things are a little bit more tricky in some respects. If you had a burndown planned for a no-till field you would obviously have to drop out the 2,4-D, but if you have dicamba soybeans you could add Engenia or Xtendi-Maxx with some glyphosate to take care of the broadleaf weeds. If you do not have dicamba soybeans you will have to do any application of Liberty if you have that type of beans. If you are planting conventional soybeans talk with us for your options. Another potential problem that we could possibly encounter this year is insects. Later planted corn could has potential for armyworms, seed corn maggot, wire worms and black cutworm. We wil talk about black cutworms later, but for now we will discuss other insects. Seedcorn maggots can occur when we have cool and damp soils, which is the conditions some of the early corn was planted in this year. Sine there are no rescue treatments available you will have to analyze the healthy stand and decide whether or not to replant. To control true armyworms you can either use an insecticide or plant a hybrid that is resistant to the insect. To check and see if your hybrid has the proper traits check this handy table out this table 2018 Bt Trait Table.
Black Cutworms Are Coming, Are You Protected?
For the past week or two we have been receiving a lot of bulletins about the risk for black cutworms this year. With the corn crop being planted a little later this year combined with the moth flights that we have seen, corn plants could be more susceptible to damage. Look at the picture below to see where moths have been found so far this year.
As you can see there are no traps set in Peoria, Stark, Marshall or Henry counties do not have any traps in this study. Because of this we have put a few traps out and we will let you know what we find. For most of you if you are planting a corn hybrid with the Cry1F (Herculex I) or the Vip3a (Agrisure Viptera) you will have resistance to black cutworm. If you are not using either of these traits and you want to protect yourself you could add Hero to the pre emerge herbicide pass. What ever you are planting it is just good pracitice to watch out and make sure your fields are not getting cut.
What's Next?
Okay your crop is in, the pre emerge herbicide pass has been made, what's left to do before the post herbicide pass? Plenty is what I say. First you need to make sure everything is coming up even and you don't need to replant. Next you need to start thinking about what weeds will be growing and making a plan to attack them so you are not hurt in the fall. If you are planning to sidedress nitrogen on your corn, you need to look at different products that could help you increase yield. Over the next few weeks we will start to talk about different additives that we suggest in your sidedress applications and foliar treatments for your post trips. We will also be including pictures and information from the different plots that we have put out this year.