An item that has raised a concern in the agriculture world recently is heat unit accumulation. Manager of Bayer Crop Science, Troy Coziahr, reports farmers are 100 heat units short from where they would normally be at:
“If you look at typical accumulation in late April, early May, basically is what that means is we are about ten days behind where we would normally be in crop development. As you are looking at those charts on a replant decision, there is a school of thought that says okay you may have planted on April 20th, but that crop hasn’t developed like it normally would have. When you are looking at those charts, you should probably add about ten days to that plant. So if you planted on April 20th, and you are trying to evaluate a replant, you should probably really be looking at an April 30th plant date on those charts because that’s a little bit more in line with where your crop is actually developed. So again, it is a little complicated, but it is definitely worth your time to get out there and look to see what you have for stands,” says Coziahr.
As more heat is starting to develop in the forecast, crops in the fields will greatly benefit, but that also brings the growth of weeds. Farmers were able to get into the fields early and plant and then spray a pre-emergent herbicide, which Coziahr states are most likely reaching the end of their useful life:
“They sprayed those pre-emergent herbicides like they should have when they planted, but they everything kind of laid in the cold ground and nothing really happened. Things didn’t develop like they normally would. So now here we are about a month later, the crop is behind its normal development and we have had a lot of rain, which means that probably those pre-emergent herbicides are reaching the end of their useful life right now. We are nowhere near canopy and once things warm up the weeds are going to pop right along with the crop,” Coziahr shares.
Coziahr says it is very important to get out and scout on weed pressure and possibly getting out earlier than normal on layering another residual product to help in getting the crop to canopy.
