Weather Issues In Corn

Apr 22, 2015

By Dewey Lee, Extension Corn Agronomist

Over the last ten days, southwest Georgia has had between 4 and 6+ inches of rain. Other parts of the state may or may not have had as much but still be a little wet. While corn doesn’t like to live in saturated soils, it generally can handle it in the coastal plains soils of south Georgia as those soils typically drain well.

However, when you couple it with high winds, it can certainly throw a “wrench in the works”. Over the last few days, lots of farms have experienced high winds causing corn to lodge in many fields. Saturated soils slow the development of nodal roots due to low soil oxygen conditions. High winds therefore can “push” the stalks over and will, sometimes, expose those roots just underneath the surface.

Currently, corn ranges in age from just coming up to the V8/V9 stage. Most of the time, corn will begin to straighten up in a few days (if the rain stops) or at least “gooseneck” a little as it begins to straighten. What current conditions have done, is to prevent any field work until the corn plants clear the middles so a tractor can travel the area without running over stalks. Given any sunshine over the next few days, the crop will begin to straighten as the stalks continue to lenghten and soils dry. Hopefully field work such as herbicide or nitrogen applications will resume and ease the pain of the last several days.

By the way, on deep sands or loamy sand soils, you can expect that some of the applied N has already leached below the root zone and you may consider adding a little more. Applying N through the pivot, though, will make this an easier task. Unfortunately for those farms where corn is between the V7 and V9 stages, the cloudy conditions and wet soils have already had its negative effects on the number of rows due to lower irradiation and temporary nutrient deficiencies.