The cold weather is here, but silage is still underway for many of us around the region. The weather over the next 10 days should allow the last acres of silage to dry down quickly. Because silage harvest is wrapping up very soon, the Growing Degree Day unit totals in section 2 show GDD totals since planting date only.

And because the GDD accumulations won't really budge very much from this point on, this will be the last regular update of the season. But as always, I'll be sure to reach out when timely information crosses my desk.

Happy and safe harvesting!

1. Reminders from last week:

Check out last week's Update for info on:

a. Cover crops (there's still time!)
b. Hay harvest considerations
c. Free soybean cyst nematode screening
d. The effect of rain on corn silage dry-down
e. To assess the effectiveness of this year's nutrient plan, see this factsheet and this factsheet on the Corn Stalk Nitrate Test.

2. Growing Degree Days as of 28 Sept: See: Climate Smart Farming Growing Degree Day Calculator

Growing degree days (GDD) are calculated by taking the average daily temperature and subtracting the base temperature for development of a given organism ((High + Low)/2 - base temp = GDD). For corn silage, we are using base 50/86, as corn development starts at 50 degrees F and ceases above 86. Check your location, planting date, and silking date. Silage corn needs 750-800 GDD (depending on hybrid maturity) after silking to reach a whole plant DM of 32%. Under typical late season dry down conditions we can expect the crop to reach 35% DM four to seven days later (Remember that we can expect to accumulate 20-25 GDD per day, or even up to 30, so this is not a large window). For more details, see this article. No matter what the numbers say, always check your crop to see how close you may be to harvest: