Corn Watch: Battling Heat and Mites Midseason

Whether you’ve got early season silage corn in the field or double-crop just getting started, we’re in that window of defense between planting and harvest. Hayden Costa is with Helena Agri-Enterprises.

“Early season corn right now, we’re probably 21 days from getting chopped, so we’re really watching mites and making sure we don’t have a last-minute flare up. Double-corn, what we’re really worried about right now is getting those weeds under control and making sure that plants not stressed.”

Heat stress and mite pressure. What do growers need to know?

“Heat stress-wise, last year we saw it probably the worst I’ve ever seen it with the 115-degree weather for what seemed like forever. Really what we’re trying to do is make it as stress-free as we can for that corn crop when it pollinates. So we’re going to use products like Megafol, Orbix just to reduce all those abiotic stresses that we can control. Mite-wise, a lot of guys will fly on their miticides around here, so what we’re really trying to do is maximize our coverage and get the most bang for our buck. So we’re going to use products like Kinetic that spread that on those leaves. And then products like Hype-Active to change the charge of that spray to a positive charge. Mites have a negative exoskeleton, so we get a better kill.”

If we’ve piqued your interest, find a Helena rep near you at HelenaAgri.com.