News

Cold soil temperatures slowing emergence

The recent cool weather has dropped soil temperatures drastically in many parts of the Corn Belt since last week.  Mike Toohill, Illinois based agronomist for Diversified Services, says while the drop in temperatures will likely stunt the corn crop that’s planted so far, as long as the soil doesn’t freeze to seed depth, the seed will still survive.  “When soil temperatures drop like that you can run into some problems like chilling or cold shock when the corn acts a little bit squirrely, loses its direction and kind of corkscrews,” he says.  “Often times when corn sits in cold soils – especially warm soils that turn cold – you can have some poor stands, less emergence uniformity, and other issues like that.”

But, he says, growers won’t know how much, if any damage, there will be to the crop, until the soils warm up and the corn emerges.

Toohill tells Brownfield, even though planting progress has slowed – he thinks farmers are in good shape, especially if next week’s forecast cooperates and they’re able to plant corn at the end of April and early May.  “I really think that osme of the corn that got planted last weekend ahead of the rain is probably going to come up slower than the corn that comes up 10 days later,” he says.  “Based on that cold shock, cold temperatures, and cold rain.”

USDA’s latest weekly crop report showed 9 percent of the corn crop is planted nationally. (As of Sunday, 15% of corn was planted in Illinois.)