Intense Hail Storm Trashes Southern Minnesota Corn

Driving over to Farmfest by Red Wood Falls I saw this cornfield. There was a hail storm that hit the Farmfest area in June. This field is just west of Morgan. I have never seen a cornfield that was so devastated by hail. Many of the bean fields had been replanted and many of the cornfields had been worked over and planted to a cover crop. I do not know whose field this is or why it was not replanted to a cover crop.

At the Farmfest site a couple miles farther west, the hail was not as bad. All the seed companies had replanted the beans but they left the corn. You could see the shredded lower leaves on the corn but the ear and top leaves looked normal. I think that corn should still yield pretty well. When something like this happens you want to make sure it does not come back to haunt you next the year or next few years. That is why you want to control weeds and plant a cover crop. You cannot let weeds take over or leave the soil exposed to wind or water erosion.