Tennessee has a long enough growing season that any Early, Medium or Full relative maturity hybrid planted well into May will have enough heat units to make a corn crop.  As a group, full season hybrids tend to have more ‘southern genetics’ which includes improved tolerance to heat compared to short season hybrids and they are considered first for late planting.  However, a big negative for some producers may be the delay in harvest that comes with full hybrids compared to earlier maturity hybrids. Continue reading →

Those who aren’t dealing with floodwater are out looking at fields this afternoon to figure out how quickly we can get the planters back in the field.  This article is written for those who intend to continue planting corn to fill contracts or to attempt to stay in their planned rotations.  We have to assume some yield reduction now compared to what “might have been” but yield penalty will depend so much on our weather this summer it is difficult to predict an amount.  I do think there is benefit to planting as much corn as quickly as possible over the next week.  Some field work and experience also tells us that managing late planted corn will be slightly different compared to a March or April planted crop.   Continue reading →

Small corn can usually withstand weather damage much easier than larger corn, especially the type of wind, hail and tornado extremes that blew through the state over the last 2 weeks.  However, I wanted to comment about some questions coming in on wind damaged plants.  Continue reading →

We haven’t had enough consecutive dry days to get much corn planted early this spring and it looks like producers who want to stay with their intended corn acres will likely be wrapping up in May.  Most areas in Tennessee have not received the heavy rains that soaked other states but wet is still wet regardless of the total rainfall amounts.  I have talked with some growers who are about 50% planted and waiting for 3 or 4 good dry days to show significant progress.  Continue reading →

The warm weather bursts we are having in between rains have helped get what corn that is planted out of the ground much quicker than usual for April and that has reduced our replant situations.  And our corn is much too small to be a target for damaging wind and hail.  I know that folks are checking corn stands in fields that have gone through several rains between planting and emergence.  The following table lists the row lengths to count plants for a population estimate in 1/1000th of an acre.  Continue reading →