A perfect stand sets the stage for high ear count at harvest. But what if, despite your best efforts, a stand starts out troubled? Don’t give up! Time is of the essence when rescuing a troubled stand, says Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie.
Scout early and often. “Assign your pest team to keep track of soil Growing Degree Units (GDU) and report if fields or hybrids fail to emerge at 150 GDUs or less,” Ferrie says. “Give the pest boss time, equipment, expertise and the authority to make decisions and act fast when a stand is in trouble.”
Fix surface crusting quickly. “As farmers plant earlier, seeds spend more time in the ground where they are subject to crusting and delayed emergence,” Ferrie says. “Some fields crust regularly because of poor soil health and surface structure. Pay attention to those fields — but watch all of them.”
Rotary hoeing can help. “To decide whether to hoe, drop a hula hoop and count the plants,” Ferrie says. “Mark the spot, run the hoe and count how many plants were helped and how many were damaged. Then run the hoe again and decide if you need two hoeings.”
If you don’t own a rotary hoe, your corn planter may work. “Use its shallowest setting to get the disk openers out of the way,” Ferrie says. “Run row cleaners with adjustable down pressure to break the crust. Other options are row warmers or row fresheners on a toolbar, or a shallow pass with a vertical harrow.”
Can the stand be saved? Let the pet boss decide, Ferrie says. Consider the date, hybrid and GDUs needed to calculate the return on investment of replanting.
Remove the old stand. “If you replant, decide how to handle the old stand,” Ferrie says. “Interplanting into the remaining stand usually results in yield loss. The new plants in the row may provide some weed control, but they won’t compete well with the old plants.
“It’s better to remove the old stand and start over. Options include tillage, herbicides (depending on your hybrid’s trait package) and row cleaners on your planter. I’ve found row cleaners remove 50% of the old plants, while one tillage pass gets 75% or 80%. In our trials, planters equipped with Yetter’s 2965 ReSweep Series Mounted Tiller removed over 90% of the old plants.”
Damaged stands affect pest management. Scout early and often, and put out pheromone traps. Watch closely during pollination because it will take longer with plants at different growth stages.
“Treatment standards are different in fields with late-emerging plants,” Ferrie says. “The same number of silk-clipping insects that attack 1,000 late-emerging plants in a normal acre might attack 6,000 plants per acre in a damaged stand. So you would treat the damaged stand, but not the normal stand.”
Watch for disease. “A fungicide application may be warranted to get as much stay-green as possible, especially for D hybrids that gain a lot of kernel fill in the last 30 days,” he says. “If you apply fungicides to a field with corn in different growth stages, you may have to omit surfactants to protect the younger corn plants.”
