By Paul Kassel Field Agronomist in NW Iowa
Soybean harvest has been complete in northwest/north central Iowa for a couple of weeks.
Corn harvest is wrapping up also. I would guess that there is about 15% of the corn that is yet to be harvested.
We have experienced a very warm and dry harvest season. I checked the mesonet and found that we were about 115 Growing Degree Days (GDDs) above normal for September. Most of that surplus occurred in late September – which was very timely since a lot of corn was mature by mid September.
October has also been real nice in terms of weather. A check of GDDs for October show that we were only about 20 GDDs ahead of schedule for October.
Growing Degree Days can be used to estimate corn grain dry down. It takes about 30 to 45 GDDs for corn grain to dry one point in the field. Obviously there are other factors also – including sun, wind, and humidity - that affect field dry down of corn grain. And we had all of those factors helping us out this year.
Many farmers are turning their efforts to fall tillage, soil sampling and drainage tile installation. I would expect see fall ammonia application to begin next week.