Frost Damaged Corn

The past weeks weather has slowed the great progress we have seen with planting and crop emergence. Some areas even experienced snow and frost, so I am going to give you a few thoughts on what this means if you were in one of these areas. First we need to look at how corn grows, when corn emerges the growing point of the plant is still well below the soil surface. In fact the growing point does not reach the soil surface until the plant reaches v5 to v6 growth stage. That means that at least 5 full leaves are developed and you can identify the leaf collar on the plant.

Fortunately most of our corn was not at the v5 stage yet. If you did experience some frost on smaller corn the best thing to do is wait and watch. The frosted leaf tissue will turn yellow and start to wilt as it turns brown and begins to decay over the next week. If you dig some plants and split them open you will see that the plant material below ground will be white and firm, this is a good sign and tells you that the plant is alive and will recover with the return of warm weather. The plant will continue to grow and push up through the damaged tip, as it does so its important to watch and make sure the new growth is able to open the new leaves to collect sunlight and recover. In some rare cases I have seen where it helps to clip the frosted tips off to enable the new growth to come through, but this is rare. From here forward the crop will recover, but it’s important to remember that it has been stressed, so make sure we do not do anything to add to the stress; like apply any herbicides for a few days.