Northern Michigan planting this spring started earlier than usual but the pace slowed during a lengthy, cold and wet season. In a growing season update, Christian McGuire, Channel Seed Technical Agronomist who covers northern Michigan, says the crop has now, finally taken a positive turn.
“Especially this last week with some severe heat in the region, corn and soybeans are really thriving, looking very good coming out of some of those just slow, sluggish starts that they had. So, things are really looking up.”
Generally, the last ten days have brought rains where needed and crop growth has been excellent. But McGuire’s eyes are now focused on tar spot expansion.
“I am watching tar spot be confirmed in northern Indiana and just kind of creeping towards our southern border here in Michigan,” he said. “I just know, given the past 10 days of moisture, plenty of it in the forecast for the next 10 days, I do expect to see some tar spot starting to roll in. We just need to keep on top of that, keep scouting and then potentially making an earlier fungicide pass than we have in the past.”
Tar spot in corn looks like it will make an early arrival this year.
“Typically, we’ve been hitting that mid-July, and then back in 2021, the first really bad year of it for Michigan was actually not until mid-August that we saw it, so this would be definitely earlier than we are used to seeing it pop up, and especially my territory in Northern Michigan.”
With the early arrival plan on two fungicide applications.
“If we are going to make an earlier application like a most corn in that V6 to V10 range the next couple weeks here, that’s going to be great to get foliar activity against tar spot,” McGuire explained. “Residual is going to run out by that late July, early August time frame that we just talked. So, I would say make that application if you’re seeing it and then scout through it the next couple of weeks. Then if we see resurgence in late July, early August, probably going to have to make that pass that we were already planning.”
McGuire says if you can fight off the tar spot, the 2025 corn crop has a lot of promise right now. Hear more in the full MAT and Channel Seed growing season update:
