I looked at corn yesterday setting in the V8 growth stage. Thankfully, we had a small dry period in the early week to get out our post emergent herbicides in this field. Weed control here is good. But the rain and wind have left corn lodging. You can see it throughout the whole field. In very few spots, plants are laying completely on the ground. Saturated soils have slowed the development of nodal roots because of less oxygen in the soil. UGA Extension Corn Agronomist Dr. Dewey Lee says while corn doesn’t like to live in saturated soils, it generally can handle it in the coastal plains soils of south Georgia as those soils typically drain well….
“Most of the time, corn will begin to straighten up in a few days (if the rain stops) or at least ‘gooseneck’ a little as it begins to straighten. What current conditions have done is to prevent any field work until the corn plants clear the middles so a tractor can travel the area without running over stalks. Given any sunshine over the next few days, the crop will begin to straighten as the stalks continue to lengthen and soils dry. Hopefully field work such as herbicide or nitrogen applications will resume and ease the pain of the last several days.
On deep sands or loamy sand soils, you can expect that some of the applied N has already leached below the root zone and you may consider adding a little more. Applying N through the pivot, though, will make this an easier task. Unfortunately for those farms where corn is between the V7 and V9 stages, the cloudy conditions and wet soils have already had its negative effects on the number of rows due to lower irradiation and temporary nutrient deficiencies.”
Thomas County Ag 