Corn School: A prairie update on corn under irrigation

There is great variability in corn on the prairies this year, with a dry start in many areas, then a noticeable lack of heat units later in the season. But, in the south, near Bow Island, irrigated corn is looking good.

In this Corn School, Dan Foster of Pride Seeds joins RealAgriculture’s Kara Oosterhuis in a field planted May 13.

“So this corn is about two days away from tassel, or pollination,” says Foster. “We’ve got some excellent heat happening now, so it’s great time for this corn to be pollinating.”

It’s also a great time for corn producers to walk through their fields, assessing staging, and looking for stress.

“So in Ontario, or the mid-west in U.S., we’d be looking for leaf disease. At this time we’d probably be doing some fungicide applications,” says Foster, adding though he hasn’t seen leaf disease yet, tassel is the best time for good protection.

Though corn may be looking good in the video below, there is much to improve on, especially, says Foster, when it comes to weed control in Western Canada.

“We’ve gotta get some pre- weed control down on that corn. Waiting until that corn has weeds in it to spray glyphosate – it’s too late. Up to four-leaf you’re losing half a bushel a day if there are weeds in there, so that is the sensitive time that we need to keep them clean.”

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