This document printed from the University
of Illinois Extension Crop, Stock and Ledger at http://www.extension.uiuc.edu/champaign/
Challenges Continue for a Difficult Crop Year
June 27, 2008
N. Dennis Bowman
Extension Educator, Crop Systems
Champaign Extension Center 801 N. Country Fair Drive
Suite E
Champaign, IL 61821
Phone: 217-333-4901
FAX: 217-333-4943 ndbowman@illinois.edu
The growing season has hardly gotten started and is already one that I predict will be talked about for years. Comments such as, "This isn't near as bad as '08!," "I haven't seen ponds this big since '08!," or "I haven't planted corn in late June since '08!" may be heard by many generations to come.
In the rush to get this crop planted and replanted some errors occurred. Problems with herbicide tolerance, herbicide drifts and tank contamination are a now surfacing. Many fields do not look as uniform or healthy as they would in a normal year. Examine fields looking for areas where the sprayer may have skipped, overlapped or had a plugged nozzle. These areas either received more or less material than they should have. This is a big stress year, minor variations have become magnified several fold.
If the whole field looks stressed and the overlaps look even worse, look hard for any areas the sprayer may have missed. If these areas look much better, something in the spray tank is probably the cause. Be advised that it may be just what you paid for. Many of our current post emergence corn herbicides are in the ALS category and have crop tolerance issues. In good years it is hardly noticeable but in a high-stress year such as this it may be a problem. Also, in the rush to get acres covered, with a lot of hurried switching back and forth from corn to soybeans there is a greater risk of tank contamination.
Another challenge to growers will be scouting these replanted fields. We have many fields with crops at very different growth stages and pockets of soybeans in the middle of big corn fields.
Some of the current insect concerns include cutworm, corn borer and earworm. Fields with newly emerged replant corn seedlings are still at risk from cutworms. While a few nibbles on an older plant are insignificant, those nibbles on a newly emerged seedling are critical. An unusual early season corn pest has shown up this year, the corn earworm. Seed producers and sweet corn growers are very familiar with the damage this pest can do to corn ears later in the season. Many farmers are not aware that the corn earworm has two generations per year. A very large spring flight of earworm moths has led to fields now being damaged by first generation corn earworm caterpillars feeding in corn whorls.
