Keep Trying Sabine

Sabine Maas was telling me last week how she has tried everything she can think of to make it rain.  Leaving the van windows open, washing the house windows and leaving home with laundry hanging outside on the line has not worked.  Yesterday around St Marys and east toward Embro, it actually rained about 1-3"depending on the cloud you were under.  No such luck on this end of Line 6.  Which leaves us like Sabine, not so patiently waiting.

The corn plant is moving on through the pollination stage of development.  Brown silks are evidence that pollination is complete.  You can tell how successful pollination has been by carefully removing the husks.  Fertilized silks fall off the cob and unfertilized silks stay attached to the cob.

 This ear is fully fertilized with 18 rows of kernels.

This ear has mostly green silks and they still are attached to the cob.  In this field this is not a problem because pollen shed is in full swing and in a couple of days all silks will be fertilized.  We have a lot of growing season left and yield potential is still high in a lot of fields.  I believe we are 1" of rain away from a crop that will be much better than it appears now. 

Even plants that look like the ones above,

Will change to looking like this one after a good shot of rain. It will surprise us what they can produce, but they need rain now.

Many have been questioning the value of fungicides, given the lack of rain.  I remain an optimist and believe the rain will come in time to make fungicide use worthwhile.  This morning I was out with Brian applying a test strip of Acapela on his corn.  Acapela is a new fungicide product from DuPont that belongs to the strobiluron class of fungicides. 

If your corn looks like this, fungide will pay.  Typical yield response is 7-10 bu/acre.

If your corn looks like this, the answer is obviously no.  But there is a lot more good corn than poor corn in our neighbourhood which I believe is still worth protecting. 

Just don't ask Brian to do it.  He cursed the whole time we were in the field and this is what his radiator looked like after one round. 

After my post last week looking for blinders Bill Arthur's daughter offered to design human blinders for interested clients.  Ask and you will find.