A change in the weather since July has benefited the Ontario corn crop, but hasn’t been as kind to the cereals.
In the latest update of his crop hotline, Real Agriculture agronomist Peter Johnson said the much warmer (and drier) weather that has marked much of this month has resulted in much improved, and in some cases, excellent looking corn crops. However, the heat – with daytime temperatures this past week soaring to well over 30 degrees C and nighttime lows only falling into the mid-20s - has negatively impacted the grain fill stage for the province’s later-developing cereals.
As Johnson noted, corn does well with warm days and warm nights, and despite the poor start caused by cool, and excessively wet spring conditions, many crops have now rebounded nicely.
“Lots of growers are very happy with how their corn crop looks,” Johnson said. “There’s some bad fields out there, no question. The fields that really got planted way, way too tough, they continue to get beat up, continue to struggle.
“But man, I look at my own corn and I say, ‘Wow, I don’t deserve the corn crop to look that good. It looks absolutely awesome given the conditions it got planted in, given when it was planted. And that’s because so far in July, it is pedal to the metal for the corn crop.”
On the other hand, Johnson said cereal crops tend to do better when the nighttime temperatures cool into the 10, 12 or 14-degree range, setting the stage for higher yield potential.
He reported some winter barley yields in the Sarnia area north of 140 bu/acre – a decent sounding result until you consider the highs for that area are around 180 bu. At the same time, some of the winter barley is coming off with abnormally small kernels – something he attributed to the abundance of cloudy days prior to July.
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