Corn Stress is Starting to Show

If you look at the corn in the center of the photo you can see that leaves are dying back on some of it.  The soils in the areas dying back are high in sodium.  High sodium soils are difficult to manage.  The sodium disperses the clays and even damp soils can have unavailable moisture.  Nitrogen an other nutrients can also be an issue in dry weather. 

We are also seeing stressed corn on sandy soils in the major river valleys.  In addition, it is getting easier every day to spot the fields that had fall applied nitrogen.  Those fields are yellow and drying down prematurely.We saw a small field harvested today, but don't have  a yield report.  We expect some early planted corn to be harvested next week, but harvest will be slow until October 1 or so.