The heat is on.....

Welcome to another week of downright hot temperatures is the corn belt. This is probably the hottest stretch of weather we have had in 3 years in our area. We have also gone a couple of weeks without a rain. One more good rain would be nice to finish putting some test weight in the corn and fill the pods on the soybeans.  I think that we will have some corn reach the "black layer" stage by the upcoming weekend or first of next week. That will put us right on track to start harvest the end of August/first of September.

I have taken some yield checks and am finding a lot of 160-190 checks. These are strictly kernel counts and can be off quite a bit some years due to the weight of the kernel. So far we are seeing exactly what we thought. Quite a few uneven plants and quite a few ears with small kernels. I have also found where a lot of the plants had some pollination problems and aborted some kernels at the end of the plant. I figured that te pollination problems like this cost us 40-60 bushels per acre in lost yield.

Comments

[Lana]

Hello! We are neighboring farmers to your east, over in Benton County, IN. Thanks for all the rain you have sent out way this year ;-) UGH! We haven't been able to put three days together to bale the first grass hay bale (except for this past weekend when we were on a short vacation! Figures!) Saw your blog mentioned on jplovescotton, and thought I would check you out! You can visit me at www.walkingtheoff-beatenpath.blogspot.com Stop by some time, and we can talk corn and beans.

[Matt]

What's the "black layer," and how do you estimate yield by kernel counts? Thanks!

[Doug Martin]

The black layer is the point in which the corn plant reaches physiological maturity. You can tell this by shelling some of the kernels off the cob and looking at the tips of them. It the tips look dark or black then we call that the black layer stage. When it reaches this point harvest is probably 2 -3 weeks away from starting. I estimate yields by taking the amount of rows around the ear of corn multiplied by the kernel length. I then multiply this by the plant population and divide by 90,000 ( which is the estimated amount of seeds in a bushel). This will give a rough idea of the potential yield.