Corn Specialist Says No Need To Worry About Delay Yet
Delays in corn planting not enough to cause great concern at this point.
Compiled by staff
Published: Apr 22, 2011
According to the Crop Progress report released by USDA early this week corn planting in the U.S. isn't that far off the five-year average pace. When it comes to last year's pace planting is well behind with states like Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee at least 10% behind 2011. But University of Minnesota Extension Corn Specialist Jeff Coulter says there's no need to get too worked up about the delay yet.
"We're still pretty early, this is one of those springs when it seems like everything is delayed about seven to 10 days later than last year," Coulter said. "So not much we can do but wait for this wet weather to pass and let the sun come out a couple of days and then as soon as it's dry get in and try to get it planted in a timely fashion."
Coulter says there's still plenty of time to stick with your first seed choice. He says for the most part up through about May 24 stick with the seed you have, although when it gets to the last week of May an earlier maturing seed choice may be warranted.
Coulter says growers should definitely resist the temptation to go in before the soil is ready.
"If you are mudding your crop in just to get an earlier planting date, the potential advantages to an earlier planting date will be lost," Coulter said. "In research we've done we found that a planting date up through May 10 or May 15 still yield about 97% of their maximum. So we're not really losing too much yield if we can get that crop planted by May 10."
If June rolls around before the crop is in the ground, Coulter says extension trials have shown the risk is quite high.
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Tagged: Extension, usda, corn planting, University of Minnesota
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