Recent frost has damaged some corn fields with Blumenort and Giroux areas being hit the hardest.
Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Rep. Marc Hutlet has toured some fields and says it appears those areas saw a killing frost while crops in other areas had mostly leaf damage.
“It's not very pretty,” he reports. “The plant is still feeding, or will feed, the shank to try and get some more meat as we call it or more establishment of milk line on the crop. It'll be much slower because the capacity has been reduced severely from the leaves being able to take in some sunlight.”
Hutlet expects everybody received a pretty severe leaf burn, but he notes many fields are still viable.
“We had two windows in May, from May 17th to 19th approximately, and May 25th to 26th. Those fields are in good shape in terms of grain corn to make it. So, that's the good news,” he says. “The stuff that was seeded in the first week of June, June 4th or 6th, that needed help.”
For the later seeded corn, Hutlet admits the frost this week was not the best thing. However, even after the frost, he expects good quality grain corn to come off most of the fields this fall.
“I think we established what we wanted to do with some of the grain corn that was planted in May, it'll be good quality.”
Considering when planting was finished in spring, Hutlet is confident in a pretty good crop coming off most fields.