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Crop updates
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Weekend
freeze damages crops
By John
Fulton
[MAY 12, 2005]
Much of our corn crop seems
to have dodged a bullet, as the warm weekend weather brought out
green leaf tissue from new plants and plants that had been frozen
off. Concern was expressed about corn being in the ground for over a
month with no green tissue making food for the crop. The corn plants
have been living off the seed until they were able to actually have
green tissue.
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Currently, about 95 percent of the corn
crop in Logan County is planted. About 80 percent of the corn
planted is emerged, or re-emerged. After a flurry of weekend
planting, about half the soybean crop has been planted.
With record cold temperatures in the
Logan County area, the damage from the cold was the big story last
week. We had some temperatures as low as 24 degrees. The soil was
dry, and that didn't allow very good transfer of cold air
temperatures into the soil, so freezing occurred only about a
quarter inch below the soil surface.
The growing point was well below the
soil surface on corn that had not yet reached the five-leaf stage.
Most area corn was in the one- to three-leaf stage, if it had
emerged.
There are potential problems even
with viable plants and regrowth. Growers need to make sure they are
not getting a constriction in the dead material that will cause
buggy-whipping of the plants. Most plant material was allowing for
regrowth.
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The addition of growth regulator
chemicals should probably be delayed a while to allow for normal
growth to resume. Injured plants may have trouble metabolizing
certain types of herbicides due to the lack of stored energy and
cold damage.
Soybeans that were emerged are
probably a "do over." Even if some of the leaf material survived,
the growing point was probably killed. This will cause side branches
to grow and may lead to breakage as weight is added to the branches
later in the season.
[John
Fulton, unit leader,
University of Illinois Extension,
Logan County Unit]
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