By Rhonda Garrison
South Carolina has had a little better luck getting corn planted this season than their neighbors to the north, and many fields are knee to waist high. Field Agronomist with DuPont Pioneer for South Carolina and Georgia, Kevin Phillips says yellow patches remain in the fields in areas:
“The corn crop is pretty good but still have some yellow spots around. There are still some patches that need some sulfur and magnesium.”
Phillips suggests applying sulfur along with nitrogen:
“Some growers may want to watch if they recently applied nitrogen and it didn’t really make the corn look better. It might be lack of sulfur that is causing it. It takes about a 1-1 or 2-1 ration of nitrogen to sulfur to correct that. Maybe just straight ammonium sulfate if they want to put out dry, that might help.”
While more than 99% of the state is drought free as of last Tuesday, dry pockets are starting to show up, and Phillips says producers that have it are taking advantage of irrigation:
“The corn is getting over knee high and if they haven’t had rain in the last few days, its about time. Once that plant gets to be about V6-7, it’s a really critical time to manage the water. A lot of the soils that received heavy soils just really packed the soil very tight and they tend to get hard very fast. It can transition from way to wet to way to dry very quickly.”
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